Sony Qbric T1 belt change... like brain surgery?!?

I splurged and bought me a lil' audio system for my home office last weekend. It's a Sony Qbric model CMT-T1. Looks pretty high end. This unit has a CD and a tape, but some models had the CD + MD. It depended upon what you ordered. The amplifier is in the right speaker, not in the components... weird. The one I purchased was complete in the box and like new. I paid $47 plus $70 for shipping (from JP to US). I am a huge Sony fanboy, and when I discovered this thing existed, I fell in love with the cube design. So cool. The unit also has period accurate sound enhancements like Surround2 and DBLS.

Here are the listing photos:



Not bad at all! The condition looks to be very good, with some minor wear. The unit was sold as not working, the CD would cycle between open/close, and the tape didn't work either. I was hoping I'd get lucky and it'd be belts. This unit has very little info online on how to repair, and I really don't think most have even heard of Qbric.

My unit arrived in the same condition shown in the listing photos, albeit the box had more fragile stickers as Buyee chose to ship it to me in its box... shocking. I never usually opt to add protective packaging, but they overpack anyways. Not in this case ig. The fact it has the box with foam packing is a plus, even if the condition is mediocre.

ANYWAYS, let's open this thing up and see about that CD.



I cleaned the CD unit/preamp and it shined up really well. But it still cycles OPEN/CLOSE on the screen, even when switched off. You can also hear a motor running. Sounds like classic belt problems.

The first thing I did was remove the top case. There were 4 JIS screws and two hex screws at the top holding the top cover on. It came off really easily:



What a sandwich! I knew when I saw this that the path to getting to the belt in the CD mechanism would be difficult. The top board seems to be a FM/TUNER/INPUT board, the middle board is the main PWR/PREAMP board, and the growth in the back houses the transformer/power circuitry. After examining this for about 10min, the front face seemed like it wanted to come off, so I removed it.



It was simple. 4 connectors and a ground clip, plus 4 more JIS screws on the bottom. Once the front was removed, we can see more of a view of the sandwich that is the Qbric. I cannot get to the drive belt for the CD, because it is under the tray, and the tray cannot be removed at this point. My best bet was to remove these two board on top to get access to the top of the CD mech.



Before removing the top board, I removed the black plastic cover on the back to the unit covering the power stuff. This allowed me access to a few connectors I would need to disconnect in a few steps. This thing is really well built, with screws everywhere.

NOW, for the top board removal. two screws on the mid frame, plus 3 screws holding the ports to the back panel, and it comes loose. I also took this time to remove the back panel, there were more JIS screws to undo here on the back and it popped out. I also had to disconnect the power in, and courtesy power jack connectors.



You can see the shiny red caps used, very high quality ELNA caps. In fact the entire board looks very high quality. There is a really tricky connector on a bridge board holding the top board to the bottom board, you must be careful when separating the two boards. That's in one of those photos above.

Now, I can remove the main board exposing the CD mechanism. 4 more screws, and a few more connectors, it comes loose. I STILL cannot remove the CD drive at this point, as the entire unit has to slide back and then UP in order to be free of the chassis.



I had to remove the one last component, the transformer assy, and then the CD mecha finally came free.



There's nothing left. We've taken it all out. I've never had to completely disassemble something this small and trivial to get to a drive belt before. I also checked the service manual, and this is the official way to take the unit apart.



Now, we can see everything after removing the stabilizer and tray. This took me about an hour and 15 min to do.



There's the old belt, an oval. I sliced it myself to make removing it easier back when I was still dreaming about being able to replace the belt with the unit together. It was too loose to operate the mechanism, so the unit complained and couldn't really operate much at all. I did replace the belt, and repeated the steps to put the unit back together.



Now with the unit back together, I placed it in my office to see how it would look. I love it, couldn't ask for a better aesthetic for my setup. The CD works, and since I cleaned the laser whilst I was 'in there', it plays flawlessly. The tape still needs work, so stay tuned for that.

Overall, this was a huge pain in the butt, but it is working now and sounds great.

 

Ok, time for the second part of this restoration. It took me awhile to post this because the parts I had to source for this project came from France and Russia. So, shipping was slow. In the above post, we tackled the CD 'bric', but now we will look at the tape side of things. I'm expecting the same challenges with this, that being lots of screws, boards, and weird connectors to undo. My only hope is that it would be a tad simpler since it wasn't as complicated as before. This deck doesn't work at all, and was sold as not working. The only signs of life I can find is the main motor can be heard running in the tape deck when powered on, plus a second motor sound which can be heard for a few seconds after powered on.



Getting into the unit is the same as before, two JIS screws on both sides of the unit, and two hex looking screws on the top. I was initially duped by these when working on the CD unit, because they almost just look like decorations and not real screws. A 3/32 bit fit on them loosely, but they came out without tearing them up. It's also interesting to point out the power/audio connector on the back as well: It's a proprietary connector that connects the tape deck to the main unit. This was really quite common for micro systems of this era, but it's frustrating for repair because this means you must have the main unit to test the deck.



Inside the unit, we can see the same sort of layout as before. 3 boards, a handful of flat ribbon type cables, and screws. This doesn't look nearly as complicated as the main unit was, so hopefully all we have to do is dismantle the chassis to get to what we need.




First item of business in here is to remove the back panel so we can access and remove the boards easier. This will allow us to gain access to the tape mechanism. There were 4 screws holding it on, and then the back panel slides up and away easily.



The top board is the next thing I removed. there is only one screw holding it in, and two flat flex cables. this was an easy board to remove, and I decided to keep all of the cables attached to it, unplugging from the other boards. It was easiest for me to disconnect everything once I unscrewed it from the chassis.



The next board I removed was the board on the side, which is the dolby/audio board. Again, one screw was all that was keeping it in place. Also, there was a connector plugging it directly to the bottom sys con board. Easy pull ant it came right out.



NOW we have clear access to the main tape deck unit. It is clearly that same tape mechanism that Sony used over and over again in mid to late 90s tape products. Not a bad deck, it is two motor, but notorious for having a common flaw.

Taking off the bottom chassis plate is required to separate the motor assembly from the rest of the mechanism. We have to do this in order to change the belts.



There are 4 screws holding it on. 3 black screws hold the chassis plate to the front panel, and then one brass colored screw anchors the tape mechanism to the chassis plate. Removing these, we got clear exposure to the mechanism.



What we have to do now is remove the beige plastic looking assembly from the rest of the unit.



In this picture, you can see the black clips on the bottom. There are 3 small brass screws to unscrew and then the plastic assembly can hinge back on these clips and be pulled out and away from the rest of the mecha. There is also this multicolored cable that connects from the tape head to the board that needs to be carefully unplugged and unhooked through all of the different clips.



Most of the belt goo in this unit ended up in the bottom chassis plate, so I didn't have much to clean up, but you can see the plastic assembly now with both motors present. The main capstan motor looks good, but take a look at the reel drive motor. It has a sizable gap between the base of the motor, and the top most gear. this is because that gear has cracked, become loose, and worked it's way free of the reel drive gear/arm. We can push it back into place, but that would fix the problem for maybe 5-10min of play time. We need to replace it.




Fixyouraudio sells a new gear for this type of mechanism, so I purchased it and it arrived in maybe 2 and a half weeks time.



Adding it back to the drive motor, it all looks flush and clean now, and as tight as the gear went back on, it's not moving anytime soon. Marian claims that this gear is much stronger than the original, since it was crafted using a CNC process vs a injection pouring process, but as tight as it is on the motor's metal axle, I wouldn't be surprised if it needed replacing again in 20 years or so.



Another part needed was a belt kit. I had to order these from France since an eBay France seller was the only person claiming to have belts for 'Qbric CMT-T1'. Maybe you can find a generic belt kit for that tape mechanism, but I didn't want to take any chances.

Replacing the belts are tough, you need to take the small makeup reel drive belt and clip it onto the two 'fingers' surrounding the pulley it connects to, and take the big belt, stretch it around the fwd flywheel, and stretch it onto the motor all whilst reattaching the plastic motor assembly back to the main mechanism. This took me about 8 tries to get, as you need to get a feel for how to do it. I am not posting photos of this procedure, as it is too hard to document. I'm also not posting photos of belt goo, or me cleaning it up. I find that process varies from one incident of melted belts to another, and to me it's not a necessary thing to document. You find the melted rubber, you clean it off with 90% isopropyl as best as you can.

When the mechanism goes back together properly, it should look like this:




In the end, this cute little stereo was a total pain to fix, I've never had something this small be so hard to take apart, and all of the main parts to fail are the hardest to get to. Finally, it works now, and hopefully someone else some day will find this helpful.

 

I am loving the looks of this unit, just the kind of thing Sony excelled at. How does it sound?

Nice write-up as well, looks a pain to fix but hopefully worth it in the end...

 

I think it sounds great for its size, a little small sounding, but overall quite impressive sound stage. It's also loaded with features and cool stuff like the FM presets, surround modes, and tape synchro record.

 

Yes, you are absolutely right. This was a flagship for Sony (well technically the MD + CD was, and my example is TAPE + CD), and a true marvel of the time (1995). There's no cutsheets around really, but how about a commercial:



This commercial really shows off the Qbric's main goal. Simple, effortless, sound that enhances any small space. I wish real life was as breezy and carefree as that ad! This is an easy to use system which hides very advanced functionality like optical in/out, CD memo, MD titling, and synchro recording behind a simple cube shaped interface. As @lupogtiboy already stated, Sony really excelled at this idea of taking electronics and encapsulating them into beautiful cases that create a feeling or bring about emotion. Adding Qbric to your space makes you feel like your room is thoughtfully decorated, and your music is more interesting than usual. "Disc Age Unit System" highlights how a hifi system of the digital disc age is smaller, futuristic and minimal, plus has a 'digital first' mentality with optical MD favored instead of analog cassette.

 

At least you had connectors. I just changed the belt on my Weltron 2001, which was a similar undertaking, made more difficult by them unnecessarily routing some wires through the 8 track deck mechanism. I ended up having to desolder and reroute them to get access to the top of the deck where the belt is.

 

Desoldering wires is never fun when you want to do a simple belt change! Connectors from around this time are easy... until they are not. They can sometimes be just as bad. The flex cables love to delaminate, meaning the metal pins flake off of the plastic backing where it plugs into the board. Graphite based flat flex cables stop conducting when the metal pins on the board connector scrap off the delicate graphite layer on the cable. Finally, the plastic connector type cables have issues to where the wires pull out of the connector... and the red/black plastic connectors like to crumble. In summary, I think any type of disconnecting of wires can be their own type of hell, but at least with connectors you have a higher chance of an easier time.