Hi all, I just wrote my introduction posting but I like also to introduce my first portable cassette player I own since countless years. I've good a good auction deal and knew that I had to do some work. According to the description it needed just a recap. After waiting a few days for the Walkman and the new SMD caps I had everything available yesterday and the fun could start. First I took some pictures of the device and it looks just great. Looks like it was never used and was just stored in some basement direct after purchase. As said it looks just great. After inserting Batteries and testing that everything is running as it should....let's tear this baby apart and look into the inner values. Looks good and no blown caps. So no need to clean the board but the caps have to go. Unfortunately I don't own a hot air station so I had to de-solder the SMD caps with a regular temperature controlled soldering iron and to make it worse with a tip that was slightly to big for caps so close together but one after another they came off the board until the last one. I was to impatient or it was just to late but I ripped of the solder pad of the board.....just a big fu** you to myself. Looked at the mess and tried to find the path to solder the cap direct to the end of the path. Luckily I realized, that there is a small remaining part of the pad and in the end I succeeded soldering the cap to it. Then cap after cap everything was replaces and I reassembled the Walkman. Putting in the 3 KHz tape I was ready for the wow/flutter Test until I realized....if I have to adjust the speed...how should I do this with an assembled device? Did the test anyway and the device was just slightly to slow. Instead the perfect 3000 MHz I had about 2992 MHz. Not to bad. Starting Audacity I realized something really bad. Only the left Channel was there. Obviously my first thought was, that the damaged solder pad had to do with this. Frustration came but I disassembled everything and just re-soldered every cap again. Just to be sure, that all connections are proper. Another test and I had a perfect 3KHz stereo Output in Audacity. Great this issue fixed. Now just the speed had to be set as close as possible to the 3KHz of the tape. The result could be seen here. I'm posting just the screenshots of all four possible tests. Flutter: Wow: DIN: Unweighted: This was my story of the DD11 that was almost destroyed but now everything looks more than promising. I think I don't have to mention that I also cleaned the Head. The only remaining step would be demagnetization but for this I have first to get the demagnetization tape.
I had the same issue a few weeks back recapping a walkman, pulled the board stuff right off and left a big gap with nothing to solder to so i put it to one side and left it. I think its probably screwed. I dont know what to do if the pad comes right off like that.. Gratz on getting your fixed, i bet that felt great~!
I had just pure luck and there remained a small bit and I was able to solder the cap to it. You could try to scratch the protection of the lead and solder to it. the other possibility would be to follow the path to the next component and use a wire to solder the cap to it. But in both cases it's more than helpful to have the schematics of the Walkman. Even if I had it, the scan was tough to read. Mainly because it's a two layer PCB and it was often not clear which side is shown at the schematics as both sides are printed together.
A piece of wire in its place ? That is how modifications are done to boards at the prototyping stage. http://www.circuitrework.com/guides/guides.html
4.2.4 covers using wires in place of tracks. I must admit the article was the first I found and I only skimmed through it but did see it covered that. At work we have wiremen who do this sort of thing every day so I am used to seeing what they can do. I have commented before that the number one tip is magnification. Even just a £20 desk magnifier will make the job much easier.
But I have also to say, that a serious skill level is required for such work. A magnifier is definitely helpful. For the Walkman PCB. I didn't really see any part that needed magnification. The bis issue was for me the limited space between the caps. There I had my struggle.
