I'm new here and this is my first post. I'm Irish, living in Ireland and I'm 21 (twice) yrs of age. 

My trusty WM-EX652 purchased new in 1997 has died. All of the research I have done would indicate that the motor has lost its torque and is no longer viable.  I should point out that I don't consider myself an audiophile but I am fairly critical about SQ. My "modern" portable player of choice is the Sony NWZ-1060 paired with Sony MDR-ZX700 headphones. I'm not a bass head either. I still  purchase some of my music on vinyl (nostalgia) and copy to audio cassette for portable use. 

So, what will I replace my EX652 with?? I'm a bit concerned about Walkman(s) from that era having the same torque issues, indeed a lot of what is available on ebay is described as "not working/faulty". Of course nearly all WM have specific issues of their own given their age. I'm not interested in FM by the way..........too much clutter.

The only modern machine is the WM-EX194 but it looks like it may not be up to much in terms of SQ. 

I would really appreciate some guidance bearing in mind my budget is small.....approx €50-60. 

hi

here is the service manual

http://elektrotanya.com/sony_w...sm.pdf/download.html

how did you get to the faulty motor conclusion ?

which test have you performed ?

can you post photos ? do you have a multimeter ?

regards ..

I have done no tests as I am not equipped to do so. I based my opinion on reading articles such as this.

http://bit.ly/11bsSI7

Same symptoms and quite common by all accounts.

Thanks for link. 

did you opened it at least ? to see if the belt is ok ?

As you can see in the schematic , a stepper motor is only 4 wires

and includes 3 coils (measurables as resistances by a simple multimeter)

in fact a stepper motor is more reliable than conventionnal motors

So to my point of view ,there is still hope !

regards

Yep, I opened it up. The belt is fine. When I select play the motor starts and the mechanism engages. Almost immediately the belt appears to go slack and auto reverse kicks in. It will do this a few times and then just give up and stop. FF and REW seem to work ok though. Tried several different tapes also.

BTW, my avatar is the very same machine.

The belt shouldn't go slack. If it goes slack, then the belt has somewhere along the way stretched out and lost its elasticity. It should remain relatively taut at all times, gripping firmly over all drive wheels along its path. If indeed it's in this condition, then a replacement belt is required.

You can try asking our resident belt vendor on S2G DocP for a replacement belt or try turntableneedles.com

Hi aob9,
I've may have come across this issue on a similar model WM-EX672, when pressing play: the tape starts, immediately reversing for half a second and stopping. It was due to the tape sensor switch gathering debris between the contacts. In my case, the remedy was to disassemble both lid, backshell and plastic trim to gain access to the back of the pair of switches: one is the Chrome tape sensor with the shorter white lever, the other longer lever being the tape presence sensor. Cut a slither of clean paper 2mm wide and slide it between the copper terminals.  Press the lever down to squeeze the paper strip between the terminals and pull the paper strip out.  Repeat a further 2 times with another clean strip and, in my case, it worked.  For your model, WM-EX652, there is a cassette holder detect switch S701 inside between the volume control and the headphone socket. Without a tape pressing firmly against the switch, the motor would not function. With the unit I have, the switch was sort of making a connection, but one that was not sufficient to allow the motor to run continuously. Could be that the cassette holder switch in yours need a clean.  Any chance of posting a picture of the mentioned switch?

Excellent, thanks for that. I'll have a root around later.