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Sony wm-D3 walkman no sound - fixed

Recently, when I was doing tape head alignment for my d3, the sound suddenly went out (motor runs just fine). Instead, I am hearing some static noise which gets louder in pause mode (the level is not affected by volume knob). I am not sure about the reason but touching and adjusting the head screw while playing did give some loud thumps before it died (I have replaced the last two capacitirs before headphone out from 220uf to ~560uf for more bass. That might be the reason for the thump). Replacing the last two capacitors doesn’t help either. No sound from the line out either. The sound can sometimes come back if I touch the right place or hit the machine in the right way, but it is unstable and might be gone again the next day. I thought the head coils were damaged, but the fact that both channels always come back and go out at the same time rules out this possibility. Cleaning the record/playback switch inside doesn’t help. No sound in record mode either (normally I could use it as a ...
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Yamaha CA-2000 recap

 My amp suffered from crackling noise on the left channel. I performed a full recap- replacing the old capacitors (including the cheap capacitors the previous owner added) with nichicon muse KZ, ES, and FW depending on the size. The ones on the center amp boards with heat sink were replaced with normal grade nuchicon caps because I couldn’t find audio grade cap for 1uF 80V (eight in total). I didn’t replace some non polar capacitors because I failed to notice the NP symbols when purchasing the caps. After the recap, the crackling noise was gone, and it seemed to sound somewhat better but I am not too sure (no AB comparison and I didn’t listen to it everyday either.).. Recap
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New Test Tapes from Germany

 I purchased a full set of test tapes (6) from a German ebay seller hanspeterroth, as recommended by Lucky from tapeheads.net. Here is the link:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/175697051459 It includes a full-track 10kHz tape for azimuth head alignment and a mid-track 1kHz tape for head height alignment. The two are essential for full alignment.   I aligned my Nakmichi CR-5 on 6/18/2023 . As shown in the pictures, the head height (middle right gear) is off by a few clicks. Luckily, the recording head have been quite close.  I also purchased the alignment gauge from aliexpress. Not that useful in comparison as what I need is very precise alignment. Update 6/28/2023: Similar alignment was done on the AIWA XK-009, but the locking screw of tape guide tends to get loosened when engaging the tape. I used 3M Scotch Weld TL90J anaerobic adhesive to prevent screw loosening (medium strength ultra low viscosity). Before correcting the alignment (Nakamichi CR-5) After corre...
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Fail attempt to repair Nakamichi 660zx

 I got a Nak 660zx from メルカリ. It is equipped with an auto head alignment system. There is no bias fine adjust on the front panel. Instead, it has the record sensitivity adjust for each tape types. This is quite strange since bias tends to vary more and makes bigger difference in sound. Supposedly back in the 70s when this deck was made, tapes tend to have similar bias. Anyway, this deck suffered from orange cap syndrome, which is not hard to fix- just a matter of replacing the pp capacitors. After fixing the ocs, i noticed a bigger problem- there was no sound from one channel (don’t remember which one. For convenience, let’s say it us the left channel). I could only heat music from the right channel. Left channel only had noise. I swapped the wires for the head -left to right snd right to left. And the problem swapped. That means the head coil was broken. There id no way to fix this other than replacing the head. I sold at reduced price.
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Aiwa XK-009 overhaul

 I won the yahoo auction for the legendary Aiwa XK-009 at about 45000 yen. It is considered to be the very best aiwa cassette deck from aiwa. Although it was working, as expected, there were some issues. The biggest problem was that it suffered from unusually high w&f, which was very audible. The previous owner installed the belt in a wrong way - the belt was wrapped around a screw. The belt was left with some rails-like groves. This deck is very sensitive to the belt. So I ordered a new set of belts from fixyouraudio. It was not the best belt for this machine (the best ones are from a website called something communication). I always ordered belts from fixyouraudio. I always had good results from them and expected no difference this time. The aiwa xk-009 was quite a pain to take apart. I took apart most of it except for the fast-forward/backward mechanism, which does not affect the performance. I removed the old oil and applied new oil (crc lubricant). The all belts were repla...
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