In an effort to avoid editing my 'personal statement' for Uni' I've somehow ended up on this site, which is a happy coincidence. It seems there are a lot of Aiwa gurus here, and I need one.

I've dug out my old HS-T60 which my mum gave to me some time in the mid 90s, along with The Beatles Anthology and The Kinks tapes, truely great stuff. It was eventually superseded by a Sony minidisk player, then Sony 4gb mp3, and up to the present day with my Ipod Classic. But in a wave of nostalgia for the days of bustling bags of tapes following me around on our camping trips, I attempted to play some David Bowie on the old girl. Cue sad face as I recieve nothing but an eerie whine through my headphones as the tape turns over. I try another tape, same thing happens. I try the radio, it tunes in, but you can only just hear the radio over the whining noise. Also the volume control has little-or-no effect.

I've taken her apart after reading a few articles on this site about capacitors going, and the telltail signs of rusted tops and bulges. I can't see either of these things.

To sum up the problems: High pitched whining noise instead of music when tapes played, can hear radio (just) but whining persists. Volume control not working.

I'm no electronics expert, but I'm willing to have a go at fixing her, I can solder.

Please help!

Your not going to see rusted tops and bulges on the capacitors, as they leak from the bottom. Your may or may not notice the trace by the capacitors turn a dull silver color. Not to sure about this model, but volume control has little-or-no effect is a sign of bad capacitors.

hmm... not seeing any dull silver. I guess I may have to replace the caps one-by-one, or invest in one of those ESR things :/ 

Thanks for the advice

Hello and welcome to the forum firstly.

If you have yet to read my thread, on repairing AIWA walkmans then please do so at index.php?board_oid=193392314111653483&content_oid=217178235650847317

There is information there regarding ESR meters and equivalent replacement parts.

I have repaired many AIWA models and I can pretty much say that when you will hear a whining sound from audio, the capacitors will have gone. As to whether you are able to see any visible deterioration or damage, well that depends on the type of capacitor used and how the unit was stored previously. It is unlikely you will see any bulging of cans, that phenomenon is reserved for failures in PC PSUs and motherboards usually, since the voltages in walkman caps are way smaller than that. You will probably see a dulling of the solder where the capacitor was soldered onto the PCB, or in severe cases a very wet and sticky board from the leaked electrolyte within along will ample amounts of corrosion. You might be very lucky and not see any of these signs. Lucky? Well at the least you will have less clean up enabling you to get straight down to the task of replacing the capacitors.

I do recommend you get an ESR meter as this will tell you which of the capacitors have actually failed, especially if you don't plan to change them all at the same time or you are unable to perhaps source replacements for those which are still serviceable. The ESR meter can come in handy for repairing other electronics products - it's not just walkmans that have capacitors that can fail too causing malfunction.

If you get a chance, why don't you catalogue the capacitor inventory for your HS-T60 so that the capacitor list can be updated?

If you want have a AIWA T60, that electronics works, just needs a belts, you can have it, just pay shipping

 that is a decent thing to do

Wow, how time flies eh. I stumbled upon this page whilst Google-searching my old Aiwa; it took me a minute to realise this page was written by me! Apologies for ignoring responses, I guess I just forgot about this forum

I'd like to be able to say things are great, but they aren't. I spent over 1 1/2 years at uni in Derby, but dropped out and eventually moved back in wit my parents. Had a job for a month and a half, but my boss was too much of a tw@ to bare.

On a more relevant note, I decided a few months back to have another crack at restoring my faithful music machine, but whilst it had been sitting on my desk slightly disassembled since I wrote this post in 2011, it has vanished. I have since looked high and low for it, to no avail. I know my mum is terrible for throwing things away, but she wouldn't go into my room and bin stuff... I know in all probability my old Walkman is in a hole in the ground, rotting under thousands of tonnes of rubbish, but given it's strange disappearance and the fact that no-one remembers seeing it/touching it, maybe it will one day appear out of the blue. Still, I doubt it.

retrodos, I know it's a long shot, but do you still have the T60 you mentioned? If not I appreciate the offer all the same