THEY REALLY DON'T WANT YOU TO SERVICE THESE THINGS.
The tape deck played, but wouldn't FF or RW. Before I put the stack on the shelf, I thought maybe I'd see if I can fix this issue really quick. I just don't like things that have glaring deficiencies. Well, quick wasn't exactly the word. AT first glance, it looked like the deck should come out cleanly. Nope. Everything ties together, one brick at a time. You can't just pluck one out the middle. Top cabinet, bottom panel, front panel. Power switch was behind the deck but switch button was in front of the deck. What did Akai do? They put a snaking lever that goes through the deck of course. Now you just need to juggle the 2# deck while trying to dislatch the lever from the fragile switch shaft. Eventually all of the steel structure and brackets needs to be slowly dismantled so that all you're left with is this limp noodle mess. Why is limp noodle important? Because everything is still tied together including the transformer and power supply with huge bundles of soldered wires, nope no wimpy interconnects here, that would be too easy. So you can't easily turn the assembly on the side or over anymore without risking breaking the PCB in half or how about all the fragile sensors, the hanging florescent display, etc. Then there's the deck. Turns out that the main play belt was old, loose but suprisingly still operating. I changed it for good measure. But the reason that the FF/RW didn't work is because of an idler tire that has turned to hard plastic. Could find something that might work on eBay, for like $20 for 4, and it would take 2 weeks. If there's one thing I know, if I don't put it back together NOW, I won't ever be able to find everything or remember how it all goes back together. So I found my o-ring kit, and found one that fits. Yeah, not perfect, but it can't be worse than that plastic ring. Then in order to access it, more disassembly since that portion is sandwiched in the middle of the deck necessitating removing layers. In the process, I found a ball bearing on the floor. What? Where'd that come from. So I look and look and look. Now, another one magically appears. Basically, when you disassemble it that far, things start falling out. Thank God for the service manual with barely readable exploded schematics. In the end, it is all working now, O-ring tire works fine. But I really wanna ask. Akai: Really? I'm not a rocket scientist, or a mechanical engineer, or anything special. But even I can see many different design changes that would make this process 100x better for maintenance or repair. I can only conclude: They really don't want you to service these things.
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