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Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9306

Posted: 09:07am 23 Jan 2023

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Sony TC-FX211 cassette deck with snapped main motor belt.

Replace belt, and everything is working find, but.....

Have a look at these photos:

First photo shows motor mounted on the deck, but with the pully wheel almost TOTALLY covered up. Oh yay...

2nd photo shows pully, but note the black plastic behind and surrounding the pully, so you CAN'T simply push a new belt to the back and around the motor pully - the black plastic BLOCKS you from doing that.

Why, Sony, Why?

Well, in all honesty, I think that is done that way to prevent the belt from getting away from the motor pully during assembly, but that means that you HAVE to remove the entire deck, and remove the motor from the deck to get a new belt in there, then replace the motor to the deck, then put the deck back in the front panel, then loop the belt around the flywheel.

Sheesh.....

Would have been so much easier, if you did not need to remove the deck and the motor - you could just thread the new belt around the pully and......done.

Sigh.

Photo 3 shows the deck out of the front panel, and the rear(with respect to cassette) cover removed, showing gears etc, and access to the motor screws. Motor removed in this shot.

Photo 4 shows motor out of deck.

Photo 5 shows everything out on the bench.

I have since put everything back together, and the deck is working well again now, but.......why, Sony, why.....

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

Murphy's friend

Guru

Joined: 04/10/2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 648

Posted: 09:48am 23 Jan 2023

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Nice to see you got it going again.
But that makes me think, how do the cassette tapes sound?

I had a good player here and a stack of cassettes, going back to the seventies when they started to replace vinyl records. Last time I played one out of curiosity (some years ago) the sound was nothing like the original, quite poor in fact. Those cassette tapes seem to have lost a lot of the frequency range while just sitting on a shelf.

That player is long gone now but the cassettes are still on that shelf, sentimental value

. Would not want to listen to that poor quality sound on them now with all those hits and many hundred times more music available on a tiny USB stick.

Pete Locke
Senior Member

Joined: 26/06/2013
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 181

Posted: 04:17am 24 Jan 2023

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Ah the fond memories that deck brings back...NOT

. As belts and bushings started to wear, you got quite good at servicing them. Most of the time there weren't even any spare screws left over

. The Sony gear was worth repairing as their service life was generally quite good if looked after. Unfortunately, you didn't get to see much of the good stuff across the bench, because it was good stuff. Nice when it did though. Most days were filled with with Fountain, Sonophone, Symphonair and other 'Why the phuq did you make this crap' stuff.
Interesting now as a hobby though. Well done on the repair. You should get a few more years out of it yet

Cheers
Pete'.

Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9306

Posted: 05:13am 24 Jan 2023

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Yes, one of the reasons for repairing it, was that it was a Sony.
I also need a cassette deck for digitizing old cassette recordings, and Sony seemed like a logical unit to repair.

Moaning aside, it is actually very well built - typical of most of Sony's stuff.
Despite the dissection required, it all was easy to do, unlike some cassette decks which can be absolute nightmares to pull to bits and put back together again.

Surprisingly, in this Sony, the flywheel was just a cheapie - circle of mild-steel plate stamped out, and fixed to a plastic pully wheel, with the capstan press-fitted into that. When spinning, it is not perfectly symmetrical, which is not ideal, but I don't THINK it will introduce too much nasties to the sound. I have yet to hook it up to an amp to see what it sounds like. I also don't have any kind of test tapes, so I will be going by ear as to how it sounds.

All the top-quality decks usually had a cast flywheel/pully in one unit
Some were impressively large and heavy, all to help normalize the speed I guess.
You don't see those flywheels anymore, not even in Sony decks!

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

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