
Technics RS-B665 Direct Drive Cassette Deck Service
The Technics RS-B665 is a direct-drive cassette deck and roughly the middle of its model range from 1989 to 1991. It's a good performer and a fuss-free, maintenance-free cassette player.
The Technics RS-B665 is a direct-drive cassette deck and roughly the middle of its model range from 1989 to 1991. It's a good performer and a fuss-free, maintenance-free cassette player.
The Toshiba PC-G10 cassette deck was sold in 1983 as part of a Toshiba ‘Rack system’. These are fine decks and well worth the little they cost to pick up on the second-hand market.
the culmination of the so-called ‘ghettoblaster’ in its best form after decades of refinement. This particular example had a few faults. The CD player didn’t read discs, the tape deck warbled hopelessly off key and FM radio reception wasn’t as good as I thought it should be.
A Sony CFS-W318 radio cassette boombox from the turn of the millennium. Scrapped due to brittle plastic in the tape mechanisms, but an interesting electronic design and a useful source of parts including a nice tuner module.
You can't save 'em all. This is a Philips MC-151 micro 'hi-fi' system, a far cry from the once-great audio division of Philips who produced the first cassette recorders, a myriad of portable and hi-fi turntables, one of the first consumer CD players and even owned Marantz for a time.
A basic primer on cassette capstan and turntable DC motors and how to repair them if they become noisy. With due care and a steady hand many can be repaired with success.
a Yamaha CRX-M170 CD receiver offered on Freecycle recently sparked my interest. It was listed as having a couple of faults - a temperamental CD player and an erratic volume knob. These are plentiful on the second-hand market for little or no cost and are well worth a punt.
If the volume on your stereo randomly turns up by itself, or doesn't work at all, this article is for you.
full of cheap plastic and not the most fun to service, but serviced with care they do sound very good, and cost less on the second-hand market than other 3-head, dual capstan models from Sony, Technics, Aiwa, Pioneer and Nakamichi et al.
Later KX-series decks are very simple mechanically and electronically, easy to service and maintain and generally well constructed as far as later cassette decks go. And for now at least, second-hand pricing is still relatively sane
A mini review and repair of a Cambridge Audio 540C V2 CD player with a 'No Disc' error. Applies also to 340C, 640C, 740C, 840C, 351C, 651C, 851C etc.
Whether cassette will see the same resurgence as vinyl, only time will tell. But while there are still plenty of these in the wild, it’s a fine deck for the money.
I’ve yet to come across a Technics that didn’t at least sound good, and I had great fun spinning 7” singles on the L20 before returning it to its rightful owner ready to deliver another few decades of faithful service.