I love collecting Walkmans, and the wireless Walkmans have always been my favorite although I've never owned one. I love how innovative they were long before bluetooth and AirPods were ever a thing. You could throw the main unit in a bag, and listen completely hands free with no connections to the unit... in 1989! We won't mention the fact that gumstick batteries were needed for the receiver, or that they had plenty of interference. I've had my eye on the walkman wireless models for awhile, specifically the early ones, but I never find them in good condition. They are always usually unit only and missing the remote which is needed for the wireless experience. When they do have the remote, the connected non-removable earbuds are usually destroyed and not worth collecting/using. BUT, I finally found exactly what I'm looking for, a WM-506 in black in open-box condition: Looks incredible, and with little to no use on it. This Walkman was what I needed to truly experience the wireless thing. I always have great luck getting these in good condition, and they usually work fine. This one had no batteries included, and was completely free of any corrosion. But when I went to use this device, it acted really weak, with dim power led, and no audio output except for lots of noise. These green button Walkmans always need mechanical restoration, but the lack of life on the electrical side was concerning. I took the unit apart, and decided to tackle the electrical side first: The screws on the side let me easily remove the back to get access to the mother board. Everything looked good in here, except for a bunch of weird corrosion on the battery contact. It was weird, because there were no corrosion on the battery contact in the battery compartment, but there was where the positive wire was soldered to the board. The wires connecting the battery contacts to the board were so corroded the insulation was peeling off, so I replaced them with those quick homemade jumpers (2nd photo, right side of screen), and also added fresh solder to the flat flex cable pads before removing. Removing the flat flex cables was easy, I simply peeled the cabling back as I heated each pin with my soldering station. It took maybe 15min to get to this point. After turning the board over, it was easy to see where all of that corrosion was coming from... bad capacitors: I am not used to seeing these early SMD caps in walkman models, I only have experience with later models that use ceramic and tantalum caps, or earlier models that have traditional through hole caps. Nevertheless, everything Sony was putting out in the late 80s and early 90s had these defective caps, and every single one of them had leaked... badly. There are also 3 of those weird 'box type' SMD caps, like the Sega GameGear uses, and those leak too. I had good experience replacing these in Discmans, HandyCams, and Watchman units, so I wasn't worried about this job. You can also see those original wires that are corroded from this photo. Here was my process for removing the old caps: I removed the old caps by twisting them off with some pliers. (This seems dangerous and people say you will remove pads, but I've never removed one pad or damaged anything by doing this carefully.) I then cleaned the left over pads with alcohol. You must remove as much corrosion as you can before heating up the pads. I then heated up the pads to remove the left over capacitor legs and old solder. I sucked the solder off with a solder sucker at this point too. I cleaned the pads again with alcohol and applied fresh solder. At this point I needed to source new caps. There is not a kit online for this model, so I sourced them one-by-one from Mouser. The old SMD capacitors were 5.4mm tall and had barely enough clearance between the mechanism and board, so I knew the new ones had to be 5.4mm tall or less. Sourcing them wasn't hard knowing the height (5.4mm) and circumference (4.3mm). I ordered up the best specs caps for each value in an assortment of brands. (Panasonic, Nichicon, KEMET). I installed them in the board by heating one pad, setting the cap down, then heating the other. I then heated and pushed the caps down one side at a time to make them flush. You don't need much solder on the pads to make this work well. Here's what the board looked like after the new caps were installed: The corrosion had been really bad, and had eaten at the board, but I was lucky that all pads could be resurfaced to original condition, and that nothing was permanently destroyed. I'll call this a result. Now for the regular mechanical repair. The mechanism looked as if all it needed was a new belt, so I removed the old belt, and added a new one: The belt had a super weird path around the pulleys, and it took me 8min with a video on the WM-701 to see how I should fit it into place. It did go back correctly, and at this point I put the unit back together to test. It fired to life and had a healthy motor sound, plus it had a good normal hissing sound through headphones at max volume. It just wouldn't play anything. The mechanism kept reversing constantly, and the take-up reels weren't moving. I removed the unit again, and took the gears out to inspect. I found hardened grease on the FF/REW gears that kept them solid, and not moving. I fixed that. I also found two cracked gears: These are the typical suspects. Apparently, the right gear there is the clutch gear, and when split, it locks up the entire mechanism when it hits the broken seam part. The gear to the left is the FWD take up reel gear, and when it's split, it causes the rapid reversing of the sides since it being split causes it to get stuck which makes the mechanism believe the tape has reached the end. I replaced these two gears, and the unit is fully working now. It sounds really good, with a loud and powerful EQ. many of those failed capacitors were for the audio amp, so it's good to hear such a result after replacing them. In summary, I think this walkman was the hardest I've ever repaired, with electrical faults and mechanical ones. Don't repair one or buy one unless you have a lot of courage haha.
Great restore, and nice to see the complete package. You are right, usually when I see them pop up, the wireless control is nowhere to be found.
Some more thoughts on the Wireless Receiver: Here are some photos close up on the receiver. It's a tad blurry, but my Xperia 1 IV's camera doesn't want to focus on the receiver with all of that lush carpet lol. This receiver feels really cheap, with thin plastic. I understand that a metal design would have impeded the antenna's reception, but this receiver's shell could most likely be damaged/crushed with a tight grasp in one's fist. The battery cap is made from thin aluminum, which is as surprising as it is confusing. Anyways, you can clearly see that some important functionality is controlled on the remote, such as DBB. What really sucks is that you cannot enjoy DBB from the headphone jack on the walkman, you MUST use the remote. You also cannot use the push to talk feature unless you are listening through the built-in earbuds in the remote. According to the manual, the headphone jack on the remote allows you to either connect it to the main unit's headphone port to use it as a wired remote, or use it as a second headphone port for a guest listener. Ofc, push to talk will not work in any of these scenarios, nor will DBB. You MUST have the wireless remote turned on, and be using the earbuds of the wireless remote in order to use push to talk or DBB. There are also a few pamphlets that come with this unit, and many notices in the manual about interference. Apparently, noise, tones, and fuzz type interference is expected in 'cities' and near concrete? Hi-Band was the answer to this problem, and is Sony's wireless 2.0 version. Lastly, you may notice that this remote is suspiciously gum stick shaped... this is because it takes the same Ni-Cd gum stick as the main unit. double the batteries, double the leakage, but Sony still somehow only included one charger in the package.
I assume that the battery in the receiver would last much longer than in the unit? So the one charger could work, at least conceptually.
This is true, the battery life in the remote is maybe twice as long as the unit, the manual wasn't very clear on the exact numbers. The manual talks more about the potential wireless problems then actual functionality lol.
The manual I have is all in Japanese, plus it’s a physical ‘road map’ style guide. I would be happy to attempt to share it if I knew how to convert the road map to a 8.5x11 page format.
I have recently uploaded a Casio model (the first and only for now) to Walkman.land, obvious to me it is a Sony OEM. More interestingly, it has a wireless headphone and looks like the WM-506 / 507. It even reads EX head on the deck I got the specs sheet from the manual in Japanese for the entry for WML from boxedwalkman. Let me know what you think: which Sony model is the Casio?
Some great info ..Any chance you can sketch the belt path please . I've bought the usual pack of 0f belts online but am having difficulty seeing it from your pics .Would appreciate any help ..Brendan
This is correct, the belt path is outlined with the red drawing above. My suggestion is to focus on getting the belt around the motor, and the two pulleys closest to it. Then, stretch the belt to the center large pulley and the furthest brass pulley. Hope this helps
That is quite the round-about-here-there-and-everywhere belt path. I don't think I have ever seen a belt layout that convoluted before.
Think the longest belt award should go to the Infinity Intimate/AKAI PM-01/Panasonic RX-2700, that mechanism has a 90mm diameter belt. Through comparison, many big recorders like the SONY TC-153SD have 74mm belts. This WM-506 belt is shorter than 70mm. It looks long although it's not as long as it looks as motor is pretty close to the pulleys. There are worse, I will attach one for reference (Toshiba KT-V770). A member asked me about the belt routing on this one and it took me some time to figure it out, wasn't immediately obvious.
This is a weird belt path. I admire your perseverance on all of the restoration challenges. I'm also a fan of these early wireless models but found my attempts at two WM-507's to be frustrating and fruitless. Even a full cap change resulted in audio consistent of a banshee screeching. Interestingly the remote used a mini gum battery and the charger was a double one with both gumstick sizes. You can no longer get a correct replacement for the NC-4WM gumstick that receiver uses but there is an equivalent nickel metal hydride one but it does not come with a button positive pole so it's loose inside the receiver. A bit of creative use of aluminium foil makes good the necessary contact and it powers on the receiver. However if you're wanting the Wireless experience with your Walkman as I also do then I've found the WM-WX1 is a far less troublesome alternative. Only need do a routine belt change and away they go. Of course don't buy one without the receiver because the same issue with DBB applies. Only works with the receiver and its bud earphones but these sound pretty nice. Another tip is that receivers for the charcoal and silver units are different or operate on different FM frequencies. So buying one without the remote and hoping to pick up another with a good receiver is not worth the effort or cost. Still having looked at your restored item and read your detailed restoration thread, I'd still risk a complex repair for the highly desirable white WM-506
Ah yes, the mini gum stick. Yeah, you can't get those anymore at all, kinda sad but at least not a ton of devices used them... I suppose that's why you can't find a replacement. At least your trick was enough to get it patched up on a different battery. On another note, I actually love the troublesome aspect of these players! I feel like tapes by nature are troublesome, so why not go all the way! Good tip on the receiver colors. When I find a WX1 from Japan cheap enough, I'll snap it up... they do look super interesting. Recapping these units are really hit or miss... most of the time, corrosion damages the board in some way to where you'd need to repair traces to restore the circuit path or run sizable bodges. Really, checking for continuity between the pads of the old caps and visually corroded areas is a step a lot of people miss. I got lucky with this one and the corrosion wasn't too bad.
Certainly a bigger problem with these wretched leaking electrolytic caps is damage they can cause to the traces. Is a big issue with Aiwas P series. I have mainly HS series and none have had cap leakage. More often the issue with these is autoreverse kicking in repeatedly or not at all. Finding the hairline crack in one of the gears can be pretty challenging but it's usually the culprit as you discovered with your WM-506 rebuild. Great post BTW. Cheers Cassetteboy1
@Recaptcha Would you be able to post the list of specific capacitor part numbers that you ordered from Mouser? I've recently been inside a WM-506 with a friend and we encountered the precise issues that you listed here (need new belt, need some lubrication, two split white gears, auto-flipping, and curiously weak drive motor). We fixed the first 2 issues and then stopped, presuming the drive power issues were insurmountable. With your guide we will persevere to complete the repair. I don't have the deck in front of me at the moment, hence the request for the part numbers if you have them, so I can order them and conduct the repair next time my friend and I meet. Also, if you have a part number or link to the place you ordered the replacement split gears, that would be incredibly helpful as well. Thank you for writing this up! ja2robin
Here is a project PDF from Mouser that contains all of the caps I ordered last year as well as the part numbers and quantity of each one. Because this project is a year old, a few of the caps are backordered. Mouser changes brands/suppliers all the time, so you may not be able to order everything directly from this pdf. Just look up the part numbers, note the size of each, and get as close as you can. This is the place I got the gears: eBay Link
