Hello Folks, I just received my eBay WM-DDII. Yep, I can verify that all the usual suspects are present and accounted for - cracked center gear, broken head block lifter, sticky grease and out of spec capacitors. Out of all these, the most challenging to fix was the head block lifter. Here it is, let's hope it will prove to be reliable. Cheers! -Norm
Well, seems my 'repair' did not work. I have ordered a replacement from Fixyouraudio, so this project will get shelved for at least two weeks while I await the part. When depressing the Play button, the button catches on the repair work and does not allow the head block lifter to move laterally to properly engage gears. Something to be aware of if you are doing this sort of repair. Sighhh. Cheers! -Norm
Well, I couldn't wait and ended up pulling a head block lifter from a donor WM-2. We can bring this project to a close now. Nothing is complete without the paperwork and a little eye candy. She sounds great. Cheers! Norm
The wow and flutter could have been a little better. Probably my fault. The flywheel tire was in good shape, so I just flipped it around. I’ll give it another few days, maybe it will settle in a little bit. The sound is quite satisfying though. Cheers!
Thanks. It's for my own personal use. I am a byproduct of the 70s and 80s. I have a strong preference for analog sound, though there is nothing wrong with digital, analog is just my preference. It gives me so much pleasure to take a non-working device someone may have thrown in a junk drawer and bring it back to life and restore it to as near to factory specs as possible. I'm looking for a reasonably priced WM-150 / WM-170 / WM-190 to add to my collection. Some of the prices on eBay are absolutely ridiculous and looks like something dug up from a nasty flood, I suppose that's why they keep getting re-listed. Cheers!
I've been collecting since the early 2000's, the market sure has flipped mostly because of ebay and people doing it for extra income. Back then members used to worry about great equipment being tossed out, now diggers are finding roached out equipment and wanting big money for it. I rarely sell, I'd rather trade (or give away) but even then it's limited. It's nice seeing more people fixing these units, I think it's a great hobby for brain exercise plus it's extremely rewarding it gets fixed. I'm hoping to get better with the 3d printer to start making a million little plastic parts for my stuff.
Making your own parts would be the ultimate reward. I've made simpler replacement parts for other repairs. But designing, say for example, a head block lifter is beyond my comfort zone. I use Fusion360 CAD software and that thing is a beast for me to use beyond simple designs. I've recent bought a desktop CNC machine that I'm trying to get proficient in. To my surprise, it is vastly different than using a 3D printer, far more complicated than I expected. Cheers!
On my bench today is an Aiwa HS-J85. It's in poor shape and I bought it as a cheap source for an AM/FM/TV tuner for a corroded tuner in an Aiwa HS-J9. Unfortunately the tuner in the J85 is thicker than the tuner in the J9 and won't fit. So now I have to fix the J85. The worst thing wrong with it is the missing battery lid. It didn't matter when I just wanted the tuner. Since no one 3D prints them, I'm going to try to make one using aluminum flashing. And paint it black. Finishing it will require waiting until a J36 main board arrives, because I stole the headphone socket off the J85 to use in a J9. I rather dislike working on the J36/360/85 because of their complex but cheap-feeling all-plastic case. But they have basically the same innards as the far more coveted J9/09/600.
I was going to do some battery doors using pebbled black ABS plastic sheets from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/CALPALMY-Mol...+plastic+sheet+1/16+thick,aps,122&sr=8-3&th=1 You can cut it with normal woodworking tools and bend it with a heat gun. I never got a chance to try it out but it would look better than flashing. You can also glue ABS with the proper solvent or plastic weld it with a welder.
It's a tricky thing, finding donor replacements from similar models or sometimes even within the same model. One doesn't always know what minor revisions were made. For example, as I found out the hard way, there were about 3 hardware revisions with the Sony WM-2. I bought a second WM-2 so that I could be less reckless about opening the unit up and finding where a grounding spring goes when it popped out of my first unit that I was restoring. That second WM-2 was different and did not have that part that fell out of the first one. I guess the second unit will now go into the queue for restore at some point. While I am amazed at how well the first unit sounds after the restore and how well it spec'd on the testing equipment, if you touch the unit while it's playing, you will get just a little bit of static that bleeds into the audio. I just don't touch it after I hit the play button. I suppose it will stay that way until I figure out where that grounding spring goes. It's always a letdown when you have to shelve a project and wait for that opportunity to find a donor at a reasonable price. You say the tuner is corroded, I take it from a leaking battery? Cheers!
