I won an auction for an Aiwa CS-600U on eBay in late August 2016. The opening bid was for all of ninety-nine cents and ended up being driven up -- by me and, I often suspected, by the seller -- well past a hundred American dollars. As the seller promised in the eBay ad' for the Aiwa, the product would be well-packaged before being shipped. Five days later, the item had arrived from Indiana, showing up in my home here in the southeastern United States.
As the seller had promised, the item was well-packaged. It took quite a while to cut and peel my way through all that bubble-wrap, sticky tape and green Styrofoam "peanuts"! The seller was honest in stating that the tape deck doesn't work, but suggested that the CS-600U only needed new tape-deck belts. I half-wish that was the case!
The truth is that the tape-deck bay of the Aiwa wouldn't even admit ("fit") a relatively new-condition Fuji DR-I 90-minute normal-bias audiocassette that had been in new condition until some months ago when I unwrapped it. I had used the audiocassette to record 90 minutes of music from late-night FM radio with another boombox -- an eBay-purchased JVC RC-M50JW -- over several nights. An examination of the audiocassette deck of the Aiwa CS-600U revealed that the tape-heads mechanism was jammed in the PLAY position or another position. This seems to be a scarier problem than the tape deck simply needing new tape-deck belts. The Aiwa's tape-deck motor might have since burned out in trying to play an obviously absent audiocassette months or years ago. That is what I fear, although there is no burnt smell; there probably wouldn't be after all this time.
The JVC RC-M50JW was serviced – amid strange events and repeated failures – by a distant. well-regarded electronics-repair shop, as was another portable stereo that I took to them: a Helix HX-4633N. But taking the Aiwa CS-600U to the repair shop has been in vain. I admit here -- just as I admitted elsewhere -- that I didn't fully pay the repair shop for the several hours that they spent working on the JVC RC-M50JW and on another portable stereo of mine, a Helix HX-4633N. I was worried – indeed, suspicious – about practically sabotage-like failure of the seemingly repaired tape-deck mechanisms persisting after spending hundreds of dollars.
My shirking my customer obligations has apparently made the repair-shop owner fed-up with boomboxes -- if not fed-up with me. The repair-shop owner has ordered me to pick up the Aiwa or they will get rid of it. All those long e-mail messages and those after-hours voicemail messages telling them to pretty please give portable-stereo repair -- to give me -- another chance were in vain.
I don't recall ever opening a portable radio cassette-recorder. Certainly not to fix one, at any rate. (Shrug) I'm no Mr Fix-It, a "techie" or whatever you call those skillful people. I admit that it is largely -- if not entirely -- my fault that the repair shop will no longer work on portable stereos. I am in quite a pickle, since I cannot find another vintage-audio repair shop in or near this huge city that we live in. I have anxiously looked online, to no avail. Despite being urged and ribbed on another boombox-fan website to be brave and start tinkering with the stereo, I have no wish to try to open up any audio electronics of even moderate value. Don't want to panic at the sight of the highly wired, electromechanical intricacies and just give up, you know. I wonder if anyone here on Boomboxery.com lives in or near northeastern Florida, or if they will be passing through the area on their way to or from some other place. I also don't have much money. Can anyone stop by my neck of the woods and help me for – ahem – very little cash?
As the seller had promised, the item was well-packaged. It took quite a while to cut and peel my way through all that bubble-wrap, sticky tape and green Styrofoam "peanuts"! The seller was honest in stating that the tape deck doesn't work, but suggested that the CS-600U only needed new tape-deck belts. I half-wish that was the case!
The truth is that the tape-deck bay of the Aiwa wouldn't even admit ("fit") a relatively new-condition Fuji DR-I 90-minute normal-bias audiocassette that had been in new condition until some months ago when I unwrapped it. I had used the audiocassette to record 90 minutes of music from late-night FM radio with another boombox -- an eBay-purchased JVC RC-M50JW -- over several nights. An examination of the audiocassette deck of the Aiwa CS-600U revealed that the tape-heads mechanism was jammed in the PLAY position or another position. This seems to be a scarier problem than the tape deck simply needing new tape-deck belts. The Aiwa's tape-deck motor might have since burned out in trying to play an obviously absent audiocassette months or years ago. That is what I fear, although there is no burnt smell; there probably wouldn't be after all this time.
The JVC RC-M50JW was serviced – amid strange events and repeated failures – by a distant. well-regarded electronics-repair shop, as was another portable stereo that I took to them: a Helix HX-4633N. But taking the Aiwa CS-600U to the repair shop has been in vain. I admit here -- just as I admitted elsewhere -- that I didn't fully pay the repair shop for the several hours that they spent working on the JVC RC-M50JW and on another portable stereo of mine, a Helix HX-4633N. I was worried – indeed, suspicious – about practically sabotage-like failure of the seemingly repaired tape-deck mechanisms persisting after spending hundreds of dollars.
My shirking my customer obligations has apparently made the repair-shop owner fed-up with boomboxes -- if not fed-up with me. The repair-shop owner has ordered me to pick up the Aiwa or they will get rid of it. All those long e-mail messages and those after-hours voicemail messages telling them to pretty please give portable-stereo repair -- to give me -- another chance were in vain.
I don't recall ever opening a portable radio cassette-recorder. Certainly not to fix one, at any rate. (Shrug) I'm no Mr Fix-It, a "techie" or whatever you call those skillful people. I admit that it is largely -- if not entirely -- my fault that the repair shop will no longer work on portable stereos. I am in quite a pickle, since I cannot find another vintage-audio repair shop in or near this huge city that we live in. I have anxiously looked online, to no avail. Despite being urged and ribbed on another boombox-fan website to be brave and start tinkering with the stereo, I have no wish to try to open up any audio electronics of even moderate value. Don't want to panic at the sight of the highly wired, electromechanical intricacies and just give up, you know. I wonder if anyone here on Boomboxery.com lives in or near northeastern Florida, or if they will be passing through the area on their way to or from some other place. I also don't have much money. Can anyone stop by my neck of the woods and help me for – ahem – very little cash?