Panasonic RQ-S75 Repair

Hi All,
Just dug my old Walkman (Panasonic RQ-S75) out the tape box (yes I kept all my old tapes) in the loft and it won't play any cassettes. I've tried cleaning it but looking for recommendations on repair centers in the UK? I suspect it's just the belt but I don't want to risk breaking it even more.

Cheers
l1dge

 

I guess the tape transport is not too different from the RQ-S20 I bought in mid 90's.
After ~15 years the belt had turned to goo and needed a replacement; as per Panasonic tradition, accessing the belt needs desoldering the contact of the motors from the PCB. It has a single thin belt which I think should be available on ebay. With the service manual it is not too difficult to fix; when I opened mine I had no experience and no info and broke it completely .
As a suggestion, the pad on the PCB can tolerate a limited number of soldering/de-soldering so you'd better fix it in one shot.

 

Thanks for the advice. I shall have a look around for the service manual and give it a go, nothing ventured.... as they say !!!

 

Thanks T-ster, I managed to find them and got a quote back Hopefully get it fixed soon!

 

Will do.

 

So, just back from holiday so I thought I'd update on the status of the Panasonic repair.

I decide to have a go at repairing this myself after receiving a quote to fix it, and with a bit of reading the above replies and Googling I'm very happy with the results!

I managed to get a new belt off ebay for £3.80, removed the back and desoldered a few joints, took out the pcb, replaced the belt, reassembled and now back in business! @enryfox is quite correct, the ribbon cables are very delicate to desolder, managed it .. almost .. in one shot. With hindsight, I think you could probably leave the ribbon attached and just fold the pcb out the way so to speak.

Suffice to say I'm smugly pleased with myself and listening to my old tapes!!

Thanks all for your tips and pointers.