cliz305

I have been wanting an ultra-thin walkman for a while...preferably with Dolby c. So I found this Kenwood cp-c7 (technically not a walkman since it is not Sony). Bad cosmetic condition. But it does work... sort of. It has some serious battery corrosion. To clean it, I have to open it up and that is not an easy task. The buttons are printed upon soft PCB films, which are stuck to the plastic frame by adhesive. The circuit board inside is thin and fragile. The worst part is that, after unscrewing all the screws, I still found myself unable to take out the board. I thought it was held together by double-sided tapes, so I tried to pry it open carefully, not aware that a solenoid was attached to both the PCB board and the mechanical frame. That did not end well. The solenoid was broken. Looking back to it, I should have tried harder tracking down the service manual. So I had to rebuild the coil and add new soldering leads (and of course, clean up the corrosion inside the walkman also). The b...

I accidentally broke my Yamaha KX-650 when attempting to lubricate and deoxit the deck.  Strictly speaking, lubrication should be done after a complete overhaul, but I didn't have the skill for that (or just being lazy), so I simply sprayed the lubrication oil without taking anything apart. From my past experience with lubricating walkmans, I assumed the worst thing that could happen was ruining the belt, but this time, the assist motor just went crazy, turning back and forward nonstop (it is a three-motor deck). Probably the logic control was messed up and I was not able to fix it. So that was it. Guess it is time to move on. Feeling sad about the loss, I was not ready to invest in a major upgrade, but I still wished for a sense of upgrade. Also, a less pleasant aspect of my experience with the Yamaha was that I spent too much time on fine tweaks. I got too obsessed with the real-time adjustment of a three-head deck. On the other hand, maybe the need for fine tweaks partially...