Last weekend I rebelted one of my Sony WM-FX479s using a belt from Mihokm so thought I would share some pictures. There are quite a few of the Full Logic Sonys which look to use the same mechanism. The good news is that no soldering is required. However, two circuit boards need to be moved out of the way to get to the belt. As the boards have various LSI ICs on them take Anti Static precautions. This can be a simple as touching a large metal object (like the Bistro table I was working on) before touching the board. Remove the batteries Remove the two silver screws in the sides Unclip the front panel. There are numerous clips holding it. I started by the battery compartment. The display circuit board connects to the lower one through a diagonally mounted spring contact connector. Remove the two black screws which are at the ends of the connector. Then unclip the board from the case, and remove it. The circuit board underneath has connections going off to the heads and motor. The heads are connected using a flexi cable. Slide the black tabs forwards then slide out the cable. There is one brass screw which keeps a switch on the board aligned with the mechanism. Remove this. Taking care not to damage the battery and motor connections the board unclip and hinge the board up from the edge where the head connector is. The belt is now accessible for changing. There is a handy diagram on the circuit board showing the route. As they always say in the Haynes car manuals "assembly is the reverse of the above". Two points to watch out are to make sure that the switch is properly aligned with the metal tab on the mechanism, and to ensure that the flexi cable is properly refitted in the connector and the black tabs pushed back in. On my first go I left the flexi under the board. Next project is a Panasonic but it looks as if the motor is soldered to the PCB on that one.
That looks like a nice walkman to work on! How does it sound now? I've never had a walkman with this mechanism, perhaps I should give one a try. In the second to last pic, there's a very wide and short cap (battery??) I've never seen before in Walkmans!
I didn't notice that. I guess it might be a rechargeable battery or a supercapacitor. I did notice that the display stays active for a long time after you take the batteries out. With all the radio presets I they probably realised it would be annoying if you lost them all when you changed the AAs. Sound to me is alright but I don't have any high end Walkmans or recordings to compare against. One of the two of these I have has a Walkman 20th Anniversary sticker on it so I guess these were from around 1999. Another one I have with the same mechanism but without Dolby had the original price sticker on and it was only about £35. By the time these were made people expected Walkmans to be cheaper than the alternatives like MiniDisc.
I've just had to revisit these one and should have read my own guide, Having just bought a tape I wanted to play I found neither of my WM-FX479s would play a tape, having very low torque. on the capstans or reels or no movement at all. A tip on these is that they won't even engage play unless the door is closed but you can fool them into thinking it is by flipping the catch in the body that holds the door. Another tip is that you can activate play etc using just the rubber button sheet rather than clipping on the whole front panel. I started off with the second one and bought a replacement belt from Techdeck as the low price included postage. I fitted it and found it made no difference. A problem with this design is that is is impossible to view the mechanism with the boards in place and there is no easy way of running it unassembled. The reason for saying that I should have read my own guide is that about the third time I removed the board I forgot to disconnect the head flexi and tore it in half. I suspect that something has seized in the deck and the radio has never worked on that one since since I got it (cheap at a car boot sale). Before giving up completely I decided to try the Decktech belt in the one in the photos above and after struggling initially it then started working. With Dolby it definitely sounds better than the USB transfer personal stereo I bought recently. Since they were both apart the final touch was to put on the front with the 20th anniversary sticker. The full logic deck in these is interesting as there doesn't appear to be any kind of solenoid or similar to change modes. There is a switch on the circuit board to indicate the mode RWD <Play Play > FFWD back to the circuitry, and an optical sensor on one of the cogs so it can sense movement. The motor appears to be a brushless type so presumably can be precisely controlled in speed. My guess is that changing the speed of the motor somehow throws the mechanism of the deck from play to fast forward etc. Here is a picture for @CDV. The head is behind the eject slider and must move down into the tape when you press play.
I bought one of these recently off eBay for only £8 delivered. I didn't see your old post, it would have been helpful but I managed to get the tape deck working with a new belt. Mine is cosmetically poor, the silver paint has worn off badly and the silver trim is pitted but it plays tapes quite well and the radio is great. Having the battery door hinged is a nice feature. The deck is very nicely made with a metal chassis and like you say, no solenoids. The motor spins backwards briefly when autoreverse is enabled, simple and clever.
I am wondering how you manged to see that. There are certainly quite a few motor noises when you press play before it starts playing. I might have a go with the broken unit of assembling to boards to the deck without a case. I mentioned that the now completely bust unit had a faulty radio. When I bought it it was immaculate and still in the box. My guess is that someone bought it and then hardly used it because of that fault, maybe intending to take it back but never getting around to it. The units originally came with a leatherette case, but after fifteen years you only had to touch it to end up with bits of vinyl stuck to your fingers If you look closely at my photos of the fully working unit there is a crack in the case at the corner where the battery fits which I think has happened due to the battery spring pressing against the case. Had I known it was going to work I would have swapped the case with the other one, but now it is working I will leave it alone.
Once I fitted the new belt I turned them by hand to check if everything was synchronised. It only takes one or two backwards rotations to reverse the direction. Mine also had a crack in the casing near the corner by the battery compartment, I assume it had been dropped at some point. I saw a YouTube video repair on one of these and the crack went all the way through the casing! Seems to be a weak point for sure. I'm considering respraying the top cover on mine as it's a real mess. Most of the lettering is moulded into the case so wouldn't lose too much detail. I don't think the last owner used the case much!
Another one to add to the collection and it came with a case. I ended up throwing my last case away as the black piping around the edges started to disintegrate and every time you touched it you would end up with black plastic stuck on your fingers. One of my two units broke and was relegated to spares only. Looking at what was on eBay a couple of weeks ago I spotted unit number 3 for £11 Buy it Now including postage. It was spares or repair as it was missing one battery contact. Looking at it I think Zinc Carbon batteries had leaked in it. Luckily nothing else was damaged so swapping the battery contact from the spares unit and fitting a new belt restored full operation. During the same repairing session I worked out what is wrong with my WM25. I thought the headphone socket seemed loose and it turns out the earth contact was snapped and the contact lost. The sockets on newer Walkmans have more robust mountings but these mean they aren't a drop in replacement.
Since you bought a 3rd one, is this one of your favorite players @Longman ? I bought a couple of MZ-E33 MiniDisc players because I really like the design. One was damaged and the battery had leaked severely, so I cleaned and swapped parts. All are working, but now I have 3 good looking ones and 1 for spare parts. Also, 1 has a minor modification to allow output volume to be as high as possible without distortion with the passive Walkman speakers. (Purchase price on these was higher than 11 GBP, but nowhere near the top end of what these players occasionally fetch.)
Funnily I was actually browsing eBay for alternatives last night but didn't spot anything I felt was worth bidding on. A surprising number of the later Sony Walkmans, even the slimmer, metal cased ones don't have Dolby. I wonder if Dolby increased their licensing fees, or JRC stopped making the Dolby ICs they used. The WM-FX479 has all the features I want, uses standard AA batteries (which is an advantage to me as I don't have any Gumsticks) but doesn't fetch very high prices. Looking at completed listings there were a couple of working ones which went for under £20. Maybe I should shouldn't shout about that. I did actually use the repaired player to listen to a pre-recorded tape last night which I don't have on CD. Having equipment to play media on is just as important as collecting to me. Looking through eBay I was thinking we need a "Worst Deals -Walkman" page. While I'm sure they are a decent Walkman, WM22s, which when it came out was Sony's budget priced player seem to be regularly fetching £100 these days.
A more pragmatic approach Which Sony Walkmans are you referring to? It seems that Dolby B, auto-reverse, AVLS and anti-rolling were more or less included in the minimum viable Walkman at the time.
WM-FX521, WM-FX495, WM-EX501 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313768019668?hash=item490e0806d4:g:S24AAOSwW~Nhn4Nj Considering I bought new a cheap plastic Aiwa that had Dolby on it is seems strange that a Walkman like this didn't have it.
I see, I did not know the EX500 yet. Quick search reveals the following: The WM-Ex501 is based on the WM-EX500 and the service manual contains only 2 pages that describe the difference. See: https://www.manualscenter.com/manuals/sony/wmex501-service-manual.html In turn, the WM-EX500 and EX505 share the service manual: one of the differences is the lack of IC302 for Dolby NR on the EX500. So it must have been a commercial decision to adapt the PCB and housing, leave out this single IC and a switch, to be able to offer a model at a lower price in the market.
