johnedward - 2009-03-29 13:34
Just in recently from England. Bought from original owner who's father started a Music/Stereo Equipment store in 40's. The son bought this through his store which he still owns. One of his service technicians has been with the store for 35 years and originally certified on Walkmans. Since I paid a good deal of USD he had his tech go inside and lubricate , set azimuth and check settings/output. Perfect spec unit and original center gear in perfect uncracked condition. Thanks to AgentOrange post recently bought new sony center gear now available from partstore.com So ready for another 3 decades of service it will be.
I must admit the sound quality is SUPERB with nearly crystal highs and dolby C encoded tapes such as classical soft passage music is reasonably nearly no tape hiss. Bravo Sony even 3 decades later a technological marvel and achievement!
Here is the story on this model from a great site walkmancentral.
DC2 The WM-DC2 was the final step in the path which lead from the world’s smallest personal stereo (the WM-2) to this latest version: the world’s best personal stereo. Building on the already excellent WM-DD2, there was little left to add, though the designers hit upon two areas to improve and in so doing elevated the WM-DC2 above all others.
The first addition was that of Dolby C NR. This new system promised even greater dynamic range than had been achievable with the previous arrangement and raised cassette performance in line with the expectations that Compact Disc had brought. To implement Dolby C in a personal stereo required special integrated circuits that were not commercially available, so Sony made their own. As most pre-recorded tapes were encoded in Dolby B, this option was included too. The switches for Dolby and tape type were fitted with yellow indicators that were visible from the front of the case, just as with the WM-D6.
Fitting Dolby C to a Walkman was quite an achievement, but it was not the sole reason for the WM-DC2’s greatness. The WM-D6 had shown that the disc drive capstan servo could be further improved by locking it to a quartz reference, ensuring absolute accuracy and stability at all times. This was difficult in a larger machine like the WM-D6, but in the tiny WM-DC2 the task seemed almost impossible. The only possible space was a small wedge shaped area between the motor and the outer casing, so into this space was fitted the quartz crystal, its digital control circuit and the modified servo to drive the motor. The 3V supply from the 2 AA batteries that could be fitted into the WM-DD2 chassis was not enough to power one of the chips, so a miniature DC-DC converter was also needed to supply 6V. The only part that was not carried over was the variable speed function.
To complete the package, the WM-DC2 was fitted with a special “laser amorphous head”. This component was unique to this model and was of top quality, as well as being unusually wear resistant.
These changes made what had already been an expensive model into a very expensive model. From the outset, it was decided to offer the WM-DC2 as a “professional” model alongside the WM-D6C and the TC-D3. The idea of a professional playback-only personal stereo is not an easy one to grasp, though reasonable sales were recorded throughout a long production run. To aid the “professional” user, one of the headphone sockets was turned into a genuine line-out socket, for connection to an amplifier or a tape recorder. Text copyright © Walkman Central.