Goodwill non-score

[lordxale]

So I picked up what I thought was a pretty decent tape deck today. It sure didn't look like it was in as good of condition as the one I have (near-mint, as far as garage sale standards are concerned), but it certainly is a better deck if I can get it to work.

I paid $5 for this Pioneer CT-W502R, which is functionally basically the same as the one I have but it has some other bells and whistles like "FLEX," CD synchro, and it's a Dolby HX Pro deck.

I opened both wells and checked out the heads and whatnot. Things were relatively dirty but nothing a little TLC wouldn't fix. Deck 2 wouldn't stay shut, but I figured that out pretty quick and that would be the the easiest to fix of the problems with this deck.

I loaded up a tape and powered it up. Display lights up, etc, but when I pressed play all I heard was the motor spinning. No reels spinning, no sound, and after a couple seconds the deck stops. I tried deck 2, same thing. So I open it up and I figured out the problem reaaaaaaaaaaaal quick. Both of the main drive belts from the motors to whatever other spooky motor voodoo goes on in there are just laying there half attached. They're not broken, and I don't think they're stretched out much if at all. They seem to be in relatively good shape and could probably play again.

The problem is that I can't figure out too many ways that this could have happened other than intentionally. That...kinda pisses me off, but hopefully you guys can convince me otherwise. I'm no forensic expert, but the deck has definitely been apart before.

So anyway, I have a few questions. I'm generally a pretty good tinkerer and gadgetry-Mr.-Fix-it, but this thing really doesn't seem like it was designed for any kind of maintenance. There's a decent chance (I think) that the belts are usable and I could get them back on, but it looks like it's going to take near total disassembly and the biggest problem with that is finding the space to do it in. Even if I do, I might need new belts near instantly. Is this $5 deck worth fixing? Will it be a keeper after it's done? Should I just take it back since I have 10 days to do it? Would I be an a*****e for taking something back to Goodwill?

[Marc Hugo]

The little 502 twin is certainly worth sorting out - $5 is zip - spectacularly cheap for a neat little twin that simply needs a bit of basic attention. FLEX is a wonderful circuit - very clever indeed. This is not a problem, its a project.

Marc

[retrokeeper]

Yep...I too would rebelt it in a heartbeat...yes,it takes some know-how and the right belts,so...go to it!!I've rebelted many Pioneer & Sony dual-wells,most are not too bad to get in & out of for new main drive belts,a few are a pain,but I own quite a few,and feel they are great decks,with fair to very good freq. response and great tape features to boot.Plus I'm attracted to them for some odd reason...like a moth to a light bulb...can't figure it out!! Rob

[MacGyver]

i once had a CT-W603RS, paid $10 at a yard sale. pretty similar to yours up there i believe. DOLBY S, FLEX and all. had a speed problem with one well, the other just fine. fugly deck, IMO. typical, cheap 1990's build. i was only too happy to relieve myself of it and replace with one of my two dream decks, the 1989 CT-W910R...



CT-W603RS (1994?)


http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/CT-W603RS.jpg


CT-W910R (1989)


http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/147784792_o.jpg

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/147784826_o.jpg

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/147759783_o.jpg

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/DSCF0766.jpg

[MacGyver]

oh yes, welcome, lordxale!!!!:-)<-:-)<-:-)<-:-)<-

[Marc Hugo]

Hi Lady Ayeka,

I know you like the look of the 910, and it is indeed very handsome and angular in keeping with the style of the period. I like the CT-610 of 1988 which would be an approximate contemporary. My brother has one. The innards of your deck are well sorted and the big transformer is impressive. I especially appreciate the component semi-conductors. Above all, it seems to have been well looked after.

On the other hand, your -603 that you rescued from a driveway sale and temporarily owned looked to have been in the wars. That series was fraught with transport problems, but even despite that, I'm afraid that hi-fi equipment has to be cared for with a certain mechanical sympathy, or else the owner will get what's coming to him. This applies especially to electro-mechanical things like tape decks and turntables.

The 603/703/803 seemed to have been a test-bed for some technologies that Pioneer had filtered down the model range. Even the top of the range -803 (I have a comparative review of this machine which came out last in the range in about '93-'94) had transport issues according to Hi-Fi Choice. Flex was one of those "bequeathed" technologies; Dolby S and BLE were others. These all appeared on top models from Pioneer going back a few years before the 502, especially BLE (and needless to say, going forward). And they are all excellent advancements in the cassette recording art. I think the 502 has all of these except Dolby S. I know for a fact that the old CT-W601R was used a lot by tape traders because (despite the plastic body), it was just so incredibly tough. My ‘98 Pioneer CT-W604RS is as perfect a twin deck as one could hope for.

I used to attach a lot of "truck" to the mass of the component - less so now. If it sports a big toroid, I tend these days to ask why - is it really necessary? When opening some components I usually look around to see where the manufacturer has packed in a bit of "pig iron" to give it the impression of inferred quality by way of mass. Sure, I’m a cynic, but consider this: JVC's excellent cassette deck the TD-1010TN and 1050TN gave their machine a base plate of timber over an inch thick - to purportedly absorb vibration.

I still however believe, regardless of the march of worthwhile technologies (and some nasty cost-cutting measures too), that the most desirable cassette decks ever made come from the same era as your CT-W910R. So, when are we going to hear how this beauty sounds other than through headphones!! Give us your review…….


Cheers – Marc

[MacGyver]

i have done some recording and listening with this deck, and i can say with certainty that it is by far the best deck i have ever had the pleasure of owning. recordings from CD, DVD, vinyl and even tape to tape dubs sound virtually transparent to the original. very good mechanism; powerful motors, fast FF/REW, solid build quality with no "pig iron" to speak of. fast, responsive, accurate, easy to use level meters, parallel recording wells, just about every useful feature one can imagine!! this baby is about the best dual well deck anybody could ever want to own!! PIONEER was obviously out to wipe the floor with every one else's cassette deck lines in the late '80s!!!!

[lordxale]

Alright, I think you've convinced me. The gas there and back would probably not really be worth the $5 anyway even though I'm only a few miles away. It'd simply be an excuse to go there and search for more goodies! And, they didn't have any other tape decks, so I'm SOL anyway.

...I'm cleaning up my desk at my apartment to make room for what I think will probably take me a couple of nights. The hard part is finding some place to lay it all out in my apartment. Obviously I'm not going to feel like putting it back together twice if I need to actually replace the belts. I'm pretty sure I won't be getting by with rubber bands on this one...lol

I replaced the belt in an old 1986 Sanyo CD player with a pretty decent rubber band. The original belt is still together, it's just stretched out too far and slips too much for the tray to go in and out properly. I sourced one on ...can't remember what website, but I never got around to buying it. The rubber band has been in there for a few months now and it still works :) And plus if i have to replace it, it's a real easy fix. This...not so much. If I need new belts on this, I'm definitely fixing it right the first time :D

[lordxale]

Okay, question already, for those of you who have had the early 90's ish (yes, I think they're pretty ugly, too, but I'll take what I can get:) Pioneer decks apart:

There's a flat black ribbon cable that runs from the board to the top of each deck. How does it come off of the connector? There's a little white connector...it kind of looks like it has little tabs you can push in on the sides but no dice. Before I screw it up any further, I was hoping somebody had some insight on it.

And, if I'm looking at it right, other than this cable nonsense, it might not actually be as difficult as I thought. It looks like the bottom plate with the board and back panel attached to it detaches from the front panel and all the complicated parts. Then i could just take the plates with the motors off the back and reroute the belts like that, without ever having to disassemble the whole front panel, right? I wish I had something other than a cell phone camera to take pictures but hopefully some of you Pioneer nuts (Lady Ayeka?) will have an idea.

Thanks in advance!

[MacGyver]

Okay, question already, for those of you who have had the early 90's ish (yes, I think they're pretty ugly, too, but I'll take what I can get:) Pioneer decks apart:

There's a flat black ribbon cable that runs from the board to the top of each deck. How does it come off of the connector? There's a little white connector...it kind of looks like it has little tabs you can push in on the sides but no dice. Before I screw it up any further, I was hoping somebody had some insight on it.

And, if I'm looking at it right, other than this cable nonsense, it might not actually be as difficult as I thought. It looks like the bottom plate with the board and back panel attached to it detaches from the front panel and all the complicated parts. Then i could just take the plates with the motors off the back and reroute the belts like that, without ever having to disassemble the whole front panel, right? I wish I had something other than a cell phone camera to take pictures but hopefully some of you Pioneer nuts (Lady Ayeka?) will have an idea.

Thanks in advance!

i've never attempted anything like that before, but if that white connector is the same as i am thinking, than it is a TOTAL PiTA. those look like connectors that latch/unlatch, but gently twiddling with one running from the front panel PCB to to a control PCB deep in the unit, i done fucked it up and fried what was left (not much) of the 1989 PIONEER VSX-9500S A/V Receiver that i got from a tech friend for free! you might fare better than i, just BE CAREFUL, is all...

[lordxale]

Yeah, so far I've pretty well destroyed the one. I still don't have it off, yet...but I'm thinking as long as it goes back together somehow and makes contact I won't care. I've had lots of weird things apart before but this one takes the cake for me. It's tough as nails, too...with all the abuse I've given it, lesser connectors would have broken in surrender.

You know, if I didn't know better, I'd almost say they were never meant to come apart. We've all seen things that aren't meant to come apart...some remotes, plenty of computer equipment, and probably most consumer electronic gear made since the early 1990s. But you don't just have half of the wires soldered on and half of them with plastic connectors if you don't mean to have some of them be removable.

My quest continues! Thanks for the support, Lady Ayeka!

[lordxale]

Oh crap. That cable was the least of my problems. I decided that it would be worth my while to try taking apart the B deck while the cable was still connected (the one with the busted eject switch, anyway). There's some play in the cable so I figured if it was too bad I could just carefully put it back together and try again.

I was wrong. This thing was seriously not meant to be disassembled. The wires for the motor are soldered on on both ends, and the screws to take the motor off are on the inside of the back shield on the decks. I don't have anything at my apartment to desolder, anyway, it's all at home. The belt in this side of the deck does seem to still be good though, but I think it has to route through three pulleys. It's going to be nearly impossible to route it through the two big pulleys and the motor at the same time, since the motor is effectively permanently affixed to the back panel.

I'll be surprised if I ever get it back together again, but I certainly haven't given up yet. If anyone has ever had a tape deck from this lineage apart before, please, let me know if you have any clues. And feel free to lol at my plight! It's certainly the most I'll ever learn from $5...:D

[lordxale]

Not to provide everyone with a play-by-play, but I think the belts are in tact enough to play. I just have to figure out how to put it back together the *right* way. Right now when I power it up it just clicks for a couple seconds and stops. There's a gear-switchy-thing that moves back and forth when it's doing it and a big cog in the middle that it ... interfaces with. Pretty sure I left that cog thing in the wrong position when I put it back together the first time.

And I had to desolder the 4 wires from the motor to get anything done. And it was a royal pain in the ass getting the pulley system back in to the deck without a.) letting a belt fall off b.) letting any of the little pieces fall out or c.) breaking something. I'm certainly not looking forward to taking it apart again, but if it saves it, then I'll be happy. There's nothing quite like bringing a dead piece of gear, moving parts or not, back to life.

[Web Police]

There's nothing quite like bringing a dead piece of gear, moving parts or not, back to life.

That is a great feeling for sure. Glad to hear you are making some headway on the deck anyway.

[Marc Hugo]

You've actually done quite well considering that you have no tools really. A miniature soldering iron is essential. Long tweezers, new spade connectors, circuit diagrams, soothing music (from another sources), coffee....

Often handy to take pics before you disassemble a section.

MH

[lordxale]

I do have long tweezers, a 40W radio shack iron (overkill), a few different kinds of pliers, miniature screw drivers, etc. I'm storing the parts and screws in some categorized cups. Hopefully with what I have I can limp through this fix.

Today is another day, and an especially long one since I have no work. Go see my thread in cheese and whine...

lol, well, upon further inspection many of you have. It's a small world around here!

[lordxale]

All is not lost, I did manage to get the B deck playing for a couple minutes and I was trying out functions and I hit pause and after that it was all over. It's back to doing the same clicking thing it did before. If I better knew the parts inside of a tape deck, I might be able to describe what is getting borked. There's a little lever that rotates on a fixed plastic pin and it gets pushed by a little piston sort of thing...when it's jammed, that piston pushes the lever three or four times in to the big plastic gear that controls the heads and rollers moving up and down. Somehow, when that's happening, it's preventing the heads from going up to the tape so they start playing.

Taking it apart and putting it back together this many times can't possibly be good for it. Thankfully, it's dual well, and if I screw up this deck I still have the A side!

Next time I take it apart I'll try taking some pictures with the cell phone camera...we'll see how much use they'll be.

[MacGyver]

Oh crap. That cable was the least of my problems. I decided that it would be worth my while to try taking apart the B deck while the cable was still connected (the one with the busted eject switch, anyway). There's some play in the cable so I figured if it was too bad I could just carefully put it back together and try again.

I was wrong. This thing was seriously not meant to be disassembled. The wires for the motor are soldered on on both ends, and the screws to take the motor off are on the inside of the back shield on the decks. I don't have anything at my apartment to desolder, anyway, it's all at home. The belt in this side of the deck does seem to still be good though, but I think it has to route through three pulleys. It's going to be nearly impossible to route it through the two big pulleys and the motor at the same time, since the motor is effectively permanently affixed to the back panel.

I'll be surprised if I ever get it back together again, but I certainly haven't given up yet. If anyone has ever had a tape deck from this lineage apart before, please, let me know if you have any clues. And feel free to lol at my plight! It's certainly the most I'll ever learn from $5...:D


damn. now i'm REALLY gonna pat myself on the back for reliving myself of that infernal demon-contraption CT-W603RS...:-)<-:-)<-me!!!!

[lordxale]

Alright, so with some proper desoldering tools and lots of testing, I think I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it needs new belts. The B side belts were probably actually good enough to play again for at least a little bit...before I screwed around with them so much. I cleaned out all the belt paths in the pulleys with alcohol and q tips and applied some new white lithium grease to lots of parts, but no dice. What happens is that the heads (most of the time) lift and then it starts playing, but then the belts slip and the deck gets itself confused and gets jammed with the heads in the play position. Then I have to manually turn the drive gears to get the heads returned to the bottom before it'll play again. Sometimes the heads don't even make it up the first time.

I'm pretty sure everything else is working well, though, and even with the shoddy belts I've managed to get both sides playing for at least a few seconds at a time.

Does anybody have any suggested/trusted belt sources?

[MacGyver]

Alright, so with some proper desoldering tools and lots of testing, I think I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it needs new belts. The B side belts were probably actually good enough to play again for at least a little bit...before I screwed around with them so much. I cleaned out all the belt paths in the pulleys with alcohol and q tips and applied some new white lithium grease to lots of parts, but no dice. What happens is that the heads (most of the time) lift and then it starts playing, but then the belts slip and the deck gets itself confused and gets jammed with the heads in the play position. Then I have to manually turn the drive gears to get the heads returned to the bottom before it'll play again. Sometimes the heads don't even make it up the first time.

I'm pretty sure everything else is working well, though, and even with the shoddy belts I've managed to get both sides playing for at least a few seconds at a time.

Does anybody have any suggested/trusted belt sources?


i can't believe it!! bad belts on such a young deck!! three out of the four decks i have owned were five/six years older than yours, and none of them had bad belts!! PIONEER must've been sourcing some pretty crapola belts in the mid-nineties... :-/->:-/->:-/->:-/->

[lordxale]

How old is it, approximately? It doesn't have a manufactured date stamped on it anywhere that I can find.

And I think I know why the belts died out quick in this thing. There's a part where the belt rubs on metal ever so slightly, no matter what you do - it's the only way you can route it, and it was evident that it was supposed to be like that because there was fine shredded black powder by that spot. I'm pretty much certain that's the factory design...because there's nowhere else for them to go. There's four total pulleys (counting the motor), and two belts. One of the pulleys has a smaller subsection for the other belt. In other words, it's not terribly complex.

If nothing else, if this doesn't go terribly well, I'm sure going to have a lot of parts for my Pioneer CT-W770! Or at least I think I will...they're pretty close to the same era, I think, and definitely the same body style.