Sony TC-KA5ES Restore & Modifications

This deck was in good cosmetic shape when it arrived. The deck did not power on. Ended up being a result of the previous repair attempt. There were some plugs unplugged. It then powered up but the belts needed to be changed. I ended up going through and changing the belts, replacing both rollers and doing a full service to the mechanism to get it balanced. Many of the gears have been shredded, Wasn't sure how that happened. They got replaced with brand new ones. Even though it looked nice on the outside, the previous repair attempt was a bit rushed. These types of repairs always take time. Considering the years

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You can see the deck had some issues with previous repair attempts

Belt Tar Left In Mode Motor Assy

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Renewed

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Shredded Gears

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Replaced With NOS Part

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Disassembled & Overhauled Mechanism

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Found The SMD caps on the Direct Drive Board Were Leaking & Caused Damage

Ended Up Replacing Caps & Rebuilding 2 Traces From Leak

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After the repairs the deck was balanced and the sound was good (After A Few Back & Forth Adjustments). The deck is able to hit 15 kHz at -20dB which is very good considering what I found in the mechanics. When you start extending to 20 kHz the deck's amplitude jumps a little at +/- 3 dB. I can't hear the issue with music so that's ok.

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I wanted this deck to make better sounding recordings so I replaced the caps in both the recording and playback boards with Nichicon Muse & FG

Post More Details Soon
 
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watching with interest...👍
i have a TC-K611S that i'll have to do a little work on since it has been sitting up for several years unused.
keep sharing!
and where did you find replacement belts, gears and pinch rollers?

mlloyd1
 
The power supply measures as intended. The deck sounds better, and makes a quality recording. What I like about these KA5/7 is the bias control. The recording board is quite sophisticated for a cassette deck. It controls tones well & stabilizes them. After modification there is increased bass. Before this deck would struggle reproducing bass notes.

Great sound. A certain improvement from the original state.

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The NE5532 upgrade for this deck is SIP if anyone is interested in doing those modifications

I noticed 2 redundancies in the back to back section on recording and playback

Removed C135 / C235 on PB board, and C302 / C402 on Record board since they are upgraded bipolar caps. Removed caps in this section were jumped

Now more stability present when recording high frequencies

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this thread was dead before it started. lol what a wasted effortI'
I'm sorry you feel that way. I have a Sony TC-755 open reel deck on the
"get it running" list but only for playback to ingest some original tapes
into the digital world. I have new pinch rollers, drive belts and a new F&F
playback head. On its best day it was very good but I could always tell
source/tape so I'm not interested in record even with Dolby-B dual process.
Where would you get new tape? Who cares? To see it work "for old times sake"?
It's not a museum piece though it is cosmetically flawless.

Those F&F (Ferrite and Ferrite) heads were SUPPOSED to have long life but in
fact showed deterioration in 100 hours. Under a microscope it shows what look
to be potholes where the tape rides. I assume it's from friction heating causing
the brittle ferrite to crack.

My tapes have been baked and are ready to go when I get my "round tuit."