Cassette Tape Player. How it works and how to repair.

How Cassette player mechanisms work and how to repair and align them.
00:00 General information
34:34 Cleaning the Record Playback Switch
49:18 Cleaning the heads and tape path
52:05 Demagnetising the head
53:47 Motor speed adjustment
57:55 Head alignment azimuth with oscilloscope
New video on how the take-up clutch works in play due to the changing tape diameter:

[breadsticat]

You're a Godsend sir! Doing the Lord's work! I would not have been able to fix my cassette deck without you! Thank you!!!

[owen-trombone]

This is a great video. I like how you get right into the subject, no wasting time talking about nonsense. Your presentation is very thorough and easy to follow. I'm learning lots. Thanks for the hard work.

[aeronexusio]

I got popcorn out and will enjoy an hour of knowledge share

[karencarroll]

Another man willing to share his knowledge!, thanks for taking the time😊

[wallykaspars]

Fabulous video! Recently, I purchased a vintage Sankyo single cassette deck. Everything worked fine, except the Record button could not be pushed. Now, I found and fixed the problem. The unit works great. Thank you very much.

[rachelfinder]

I've had a Sears audio appliance with record player, am/fm radio, and two tape decks--one for recording and playback, the other for just end to end playback, no reverse.

The single end-to-end cassette player has not worked for over a decade. The record/play cassette player stopped closer to 5 years ago. It's always been my goal to give both cassette players an overhaul and see what's up. Thank you for giving me both a roadmap to the mechanism and where typical failures happen. I'm looking forward to having this back in working condition!

[NovaTheVagabondBeatz]

Looking to repair a Panasonic I bought recently and this video is great for learning the basics of how players generally work

[Spawnholio]

Fantastic video mate. I now know how a cassette deck works and you helped me repair/clean 2 portable cassette players in 24 hours. I've subscribed and look forward to future videos.

[PodCookie]

Wow, I learned a lot watching this video. I’m keeping it favorited for reference. I was researching on how i could fix any problems with my boombox with a general service. Thanks mate!

[GPUtest]

Wow this has been a really good video! I like the presentation style, hope you will continue with such electronic videos. Hope more people would appreciate this channel 🤞🏻

[scotmark]

I picked up some random tips from other vids, but watching this just made it all click together! Thank you for such a straightforward yet comprehensive video!

I have a Sony TC-K71 from 1981-ish which has chewed a tape now and then for like forever (don't you just hate intermittent issues...). It's an auto-reverse 3-head machine, so a bit more complex than yer average boombox, but it seems that all the same principles you explained apply just the same, just in more places!

I replaced a snapped belt many years ago (Sony Service faxed me a parts diagram! - but more recently I found the service manual online) - which caused the deck to be unusable for a couple of decades, but now I know to replace as much rubber as I can, and pay particular attention to the take-up mechanism reliability.

One thing you didn't cover here was checking how straight the tape path is (especially when there's a little plastic tape guide at the start), preferably without forking out a ton for a mirror cassette... Time to check out your other vids!

I transferred a bunch of tapes to "quality" CD-R media decades ago, but now the optical media is often unreadable so I have to go back to my tapes to salvage some of my music! At least nowadays I can afford to store my FLAC cassette rips on spinning rust with some degree of redundancy...

[eso_erica]

Thank you, this is absolutely stellar.

[stridaclone]

Thanks. I now know what the problem is with my Teac cassette player. I could not have done it without your help.

[zxmark]

Fabulous job on this video. Best repair video I’ve ever seen for anything. Bababad. 👍👍

[hannahbowman]

Ah! This video is so helpful. I feel like I totally understand my tape player now and can make repairs to it.

[paularcher]

A brilliant informative video about how to diagnose faults on old tape decks. Thanks 👍

[alfaman]

Thanks buddy I really appreciate your help. Actually what happened was an old lady down the road had a garage sale and there sitting on a table was 3 suitcase style turntable the 3 band radios and you could actually pick up country NSW, radio stations, and a Pyle diotron cd500 tape deck. She told me that none of them work. She was right about the tape deck but the turntables just needed new cartridge that were a pain to find, but I was able to track some sellers on eBay who deal with vintage record players. Thanks again for your help

[fatbikearcticnomad]

My boombox dual cassette deck buttons seemed to be stuck, crushed and not working properly especially the eject button. I’ve gotten the buttons to move now but the buttons are not operating correctly. It looks like the buttons were crushed or stuck from a delivery. Might have got damaged from transportation and the boombox not packaged properly. It’s an Aiwa boombox from 1996. The buttons are hard plastic. Thank you very much sir. Great video too!! 💪💪

[alsiredwood]

Thanks for this sir. Were it not for this video I'd still be stuck. I'd gotten myself a Sony TCM 939 not too long ago which, naturally, wasn't recording nor playing anything. Watched some tutorials, discovered the belts were old, so the counter belt and the larger ones were all too stretched. Tape chewing, whirring, white noise, you name it. Replaced the belts, now play, rewind, etc. working. Then recording wasn't working, and I just couldn't figure out why.

I remembered that at some point whilst first opening the tape recorder up, a piece of metal fell out as well as a screw, which is never a good sign but I didn't know what it was for and nothing i searched up was telling me, so I shelved it. Fast forward to just yesterday, I was idly watching your video and got to the point where you were explaining the recording mechanism, and it clicked. Not the same exact shape, but that piece of metal you were pointing out looked similar enough. Opened the back up, screwed the little piece in to where i thought it would go, and it started recording perfectly. Never been so happy and proud.

I'd never messed with anything like this before, but it was an excellent beginners project.

[prettypointlessvideo]

seriously great video. fantastically useful for me and many others im sure