Hello, A while ago I bought an Olympus SR11 stereo microcassette recorder, advertised as working. Mechnically it is working well but it has a sound issue present only when using the tape deck. It has a really loud hum and hiss completely overpowering the music, present on recording, playback and rew/ff. It's more intense on rew/ff. I've attached recordings of audio coming from it. Sometimes it does play proper audio in the left channel, still with some hum though. The right channel is always just hum and hiss. Any ideas what might be causing this? Bad capacitors maybe?
You didn't mention if it does it with both radio and tape playback, if tape deck only I'd check the little wires going to the play head, all of the mechanicals seem to be crammed in that tight space. I think you'll have to pull it apart to get any access to this area. This model does have a balance control, you may need to clean it. I use either DeOxit or FaderLube, I think the rotary switches like this need FaderLube but I'm not certain. I haven't played mine in a while but I did pull it down and I did get some scratchy noise but this was related to the headphone jack and was fixed by applying pressure to the phone jack. It probably needs some cleaning in there.
It only happens on the tape deck. I originally thought it was an issue with dirty pots, but I cleaned them without difference. This noise I'm getting isn't like noise created by oxidized jacks or switches, it's like a storm. I can hear motor hum in it too.
I disassembled it completely and almost every electrolytic capacitor has leaked. Almost all have corroded legs.
