Little bit of context

For some time I have been interested in getting my cassette playing experience outside. The obvious choice was to purchase Walkman produced by Sony (or other Walkman-like device) so I began looking for one that looked appealing. At first my idea was to buy something reasonably cheap and then perhaps modify it so it can be charged with either micro USB or USB-C. I decided to look through one of the popular local auction portals out there to see how the prices look like and what is offered.

Unfortunately the idea of modified player had to be thrown away because, in general, offered players could be divided to these categories:

• good condition but rather expensive
• bad/unknown condition which I really didn't want to deal with
• from functional point rather fine but their design was leaving a lot to wish

Since I was caring about the look quite a bit the last category was out of question. In such case the plan was to somehow find something from between first and second.

The rather expensive purchase made me decide to not alter the player in any way because I wanted to preserve it original. Furthermore I also was afraid that I could accidentally break it. It took a few months of semi-active looking to stumble upon this Sony WM-34 which, according to the person selling, was rarely used. The description also mentioned that the drive belts were broken but that usually is easy to fix.

First look and disassembly

The package arrived rather quick and soon after that I finally had my first Walkman. The first impressions were rather good because it didn't have any very noticeable scratches and generally looked indeed rarely used.

Since this is my first Walkman I didn't really know how to properly disassemble it. I have seen a few videos where people had to release latches in order to open the casing. I decided to look for a service manual for this model and thankfully it was quick to find, fortunately this model has screws instead of latches. I unscrewed all of them and after that the inside appeared with, as expected, broken drive belts. I am not sure if they use different kind of rubber for belts in western devices because in Polish ones they usually just break, here instead they turned into something that resembled tar. Perhaps I just didn't see enough.

Basic servicing

With the long and tedious process of cleaning the drive wheels done I had ordered the replacement drive belts. This model has two of them but I have also seen models with only one. The replacement itself was extremely simple in comparison with what I had to deal with earlier in case of other hardware.

The fight against engine

Quite excited I quickly assembled the Walkman and inserted cassette then pressed play. At this moment to my disappointment two things happened. First of all the drive engine was considerably loud which would make listening in any quieter places impossible. The second problem was really noticeable flutter (it's when the higher frequencies sound incorrect) which is caused by too high tape drive inconsistency. There was also issue with Walkman playing too slow but that is easy to adjust.

I realized that the flutter could be caused by the engine having issue with maintaining a constant speed or it producing excess vibration, both of which could be related to the noise while it was running. Nonetheless the plan was to reduce the loudness but at that point I wasn't yet sure how could I proceed with this. I don't really use Reddit but there is a subreddit r/cassetteculture where I decided to make a post with hope of getting some help. Soon after that, as one may read, I was suggested to use the sewing machine oil to lubricate the engine shaft but in a way that didn't involve disassembling it. So I did exactly that but the results weren't very convincing.

This means that, again, I was in the situation where I didn't know what to do next. Around that time for some reason one of the drive belts stretched which meant that it was useless at this point as it didn't have enough grip to rotate the main drive wheel. Slightly annoyed by this fact I have decided to order a set of drive belts with common sizes. While waiting for package to arrive every now and then I was trying to apply more machine oil to the engine hoping for better result. As soon as the belts arrived I chose one that was slightly tighter than the previous then assembled the player. To my astonishment the engine became really quiet and that was a result good enough.

Trying to lower Wow and flutter

Unfortunately the flutter problem didn't change at all. Continuing the post which I have created earlier I have asked about the possible reason for this problem. The suggestion was that the pinch roller degraded and it couldn't maintain the grip on a tape. I suspected this myself and have already started looking for the replacement but without success in finding a dedicated one. This meant that I had to measure the current roller.

The unfortunate result

I have made a few attempts to find the appropriate pinch roller but with no success. To make the situation even worse multiple sources in the Internet stated that replacing the pinch roller in those devices gives little to no improvement. Following that I have decided to finish there keep it how it is.

Finishing words

While having a portable device to play cassettes can be very attractive to many interested in retro audio, people coming with the cassette deck perspective can be disappointed due to the fact how hard those devices can be to service. I'm sure that someone who knows more about maintenance of such players could get more from it but I did what I could. The result is not that bad and, well, it's not a high-end device too.