Recently I read the service manual, and it appears this was made in 1971!!! Quite a sophisticated servo motor control; not just a motor run capacitor etc.

Just re-visiting again. I think I prefer these Sony R2Rs to the AKAIs of this time, just my opinion. I've seen several over the months for sale here in the UK, but of course I am tempted, but I've enough electronic stuff! ;o)

Nice work! I’ve restored a couple of this model Sony and they do perform very well once all sorted. I’ve also owned / repaired the 10” TC-758 which is a solenoid operated 3 motor deck with the same basic roto-bilateral head and dual capstan design, it was an awesome deck that sounded great even at 3 3/4 ips speed. Not as robust as a TEAC but very, very good!

@phantomrose1999

7 ай бұрын

I do need to change the motor cap as it loses power during rewind sometimes. Rest of it is surprisingly good.

@mjg263

7 ай бұрын

@@phantomrose1999 yes, all single motor Sony reel to reel decks should have the motor cap replaced regardless of the model, also don’t forget to check all arc suppressors as they will cause the same symptom when they swell up and start to short out. Those are about the only electronic component failures these old Sonys seem to suffer from since Sony built all their own semiconductors and used very good outside sourced passive components for the rest. BTW that roto-bilateral head assembly should snap into place almost instantly rather than slowly revolving, it has to be in place and ready before the tape comes into contact with it.

@phantomrose1999

7 ай бұрын

@@mjg263 ah thanks for the tip on the head movement. I was suspicious about its slow movement. Spark suppressors look good, not easy to source the original value RC networks.

@mjg263

7 ай бұрын

@@phantomrose1999 The voltage value isn’t super critical on the arc snubber network as long as it’s above the circuit voltage. You probably won’t be able to find 500v or 1000v snubbers that Sony once used anymore (doubt they even met that rating anyway). Newark, Mouser, Digi-Key or just plain old Amazon has them if you ever need. Usually .01uf + 120 ohm @400v (or even 250) is fine. In the 3 motor solenoid operated Sony (and pretty much all Akai) decks that’s the cause of slow down / stall out most of the time. Almost never happens in TEAC decks though for some reason.

Red, red, red and green !

It's no exaggeration when I say - many tens of hours are easily spent on restoring a machine like this.

@phantomrose1999

3 ай бұрын

Yea. Last job is to replace all the Sanyo LD3141 IC’s then It will be perfect. These make noise and have gain issues

my unit is atasqued, jammed a play button, how to fix this??

Hi again. Will you be replacing all remaining LD3141 ICs? Depending on how many, it might be worth downloading the circuit diagram for the Sanyo chip and building an equivalent, I've done this with another chip - it works. I posted a link before, but it's disappeared, maybe you saw it and delete it, no problem. Just thought it might help. :) This is a very desirable machine, would have cost a bit back then.

@phantomrose1999

3 ай бұрын

There are 4x, one for each channel. Will just buy the chips.