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 replaced except for the idler wheel (only for fast-forward/backward). All was well except that the main capstan belt fell off easily when playing. Sanding the capstan flywheel surface solve the problem.

Correct alignment was performed much later when I purchased a set of alignment tapes from Germany. Only head azimuthal and tape path height can be adjusted for this deck (no head height adjustment but tape path adjustment will do) ( playback head and record head are connected and share the alignment).

Electronic calibration was also done.

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