Hello Folks, I've completely exhausted the only two brain cells I have left. I recently serviced and restored a WM-2, the end result was very good but with one exception. As I disassembled the unit, what appears to be some sort of grounding 'spring' fell out. I have no idea where it goes. The symptom. When you initially touch the body, any body screws, or the potentiometer, you can hear light static pops that eventually dissipates. I cannot find this part in the exploded view of the service manual, the closest thing 'might' be Item 4 on page 15. I went so far as to buy another WM-2 to identify the part location only to find out that it was a different hardware revision and could not find this spring in the second unit. This spring came from one of the first production Walkman II [WM-2] with the FWD play button vs. the PLAY play button. I've attached an image of the piece, if anyone with more than my two brain cells can identify where it goes, wow you will be the hero of the day. Cheers! Norm
Norm, This could be item #4. Maybe the Gen 2 has a different "paper shield," and it looks like this (below). There is a black grounding wire connected to the Volume pot. These "paper shields" (A) and #4 are also supposed to be connected.
Thanks, euroflash, I will need to open the WM-2 back up to see if it could be a possibility. On my version, there are two grounding wires that connect the small potentiometer PCB to both the large grounding foil on the plastic case and back to the main PCB. I did try to figure out how to flip my part to go into that area as depicted in your image, but couldn't get it to fit. My part has absolutely no solder on it and a very tiny dimple as if to hold it in place in a thin slot of some sorts. After seeing your convincing image that something should go in that spot, I'll have to open the unit up again and see how else my part could possibly fit into that area. Thank you for pointing that out. Cheers.
Here is a ref image I took when I was restoring this unit. Not quite the same angle, but the shield in your image is not there. Cheers.
This makes it more challenging. These gen1-2 etc , iterations really complicate things. Unfortunately, my two WM-2s are gen 2, so I can’t help
I hope so too. Chances that it wasn’t butchered are in your favor since wm-2s in the Sates are not as wanted as D or DD series, so people just don’t bother. And once again “you’ve got to get two to make one work… “ hopefully, you can also fix it, so someone else can enjoy it. Keep us posted
