Hello, Besides my AIWA HS RX 705 I'm working on this walkman. I changed the belt and changed the two capacitors. I also changend the Broken clutch gear. There is also the white gear broken (not in two but there is a tiny crack) and I wonder how to fix it. How can I remove it - as it is connected to one of the two wheels that spin the tape. (see photo) There is also a problem with a loud Motor. I can't hear it in the headphone but its a loud mechanical noise coming from the motor I guess. What can I do here. And the bigger problem is the following: a kind of distorting sound of the bass. Somehow like as if the tape was very bad recorded. But I tried different ones an I have tried it in different modes (dolby, metal tape) - not a big difference. Somehow it sounds overdriven. I would very much appreciate your reply. Flo
Hi Boiled_frog I don't know much about the wm-150 but I have had that megabass problem before. It generally requires new caps but it sounds like you have already replaced some capacitors. If there are any other capacitors they might need replacing or maybe a chip check might yield results. As for the gear, I would use something like e6000 or plastic cement on top of it and let it harden but if something goes on top of it then you might need to be more surgical or use a different glue. Not much help but might give you some ideas.
What I would suggest regarding the white gear is the following (it's part of Marian Mihok repair guides): take it out (it is pressed on the shaft), and with a 2mm (I don't remember the exact diameter, please check before) drill bit enlarge the hole just a little bit and then glue the gear to the shaft with super glue. I have done this succesfully to my WM-B603, which has a very similar mechanism. I would also suggest when you do this to clean the old grease on the table reels and relubricate the shaft with oil. Regarding the motor, the only thing you can do is put oil in the upper bearing in order to try making it quieter. Although this type of motor tend to be a little bit noisy. Last, but not least, is the bass distorted with MegaBass turned off ? With modern headphones, which have good low frequency response, it will overdrive them. I noticed this problem on every walkman that has this feature. It was meant to be used with cheap headphones of the day, nowadays I consider it not necessary at all.
