1994 RCA CD/cassette bookshelf stereo system repair
on the bookshelf tonight is this neat little RCA stereo system featuring a CD player a radio tuner an amplifier and a cassette deck I got it for $9.99 at the thrift store it did not come with the original speakers but I happen to have these RCA speakers which are a perfect match for it and are probably a lot better than what it originally came with because these are rated at 40 watts per channel and this thing is definitely not putting out that kind of power "maybe you can't travel all around the world but on new sounds we do the next best thing bringing you music from near and far there's a whole world of music out there and new sounds explores it every night I'm John Schaefer join me tonight at 11 on 93.9 FM or at wnyc.org" that's obviously the FM radio tuner it has a red FM stereo indicator and if I put it in mono mode it goes out so the FM tuner works fine now let's try AM it sounds pretty good on AM too now let's try a cassette tape nice soft eject it has a space boost feature let me try that out seems like it boosts both the treble and the bass now let me try a CD it lights up CD in the little display there it's only two digits so it doesn't display time it only displays the track number the drawer does open i'll put in my disc oh it's not closing all the way so maybe it needs a new belt I can hear a motor running so it's probably slipping on that belt that opens and closes the drawer typical problem with older CD players so that's going to need repair the CD player is very basic but it does have shuffle and repeat features it has a typical analog tuning dial for AM and FM function selector for CD tape and tuner band selector for AM FM and FM stereo a bass boost feature volume tuning power switch for power indicator LED and down here is the headphone jack and the single cassette deck which advertises automatic recording level control auto stop and cushion eject yes it does have a nice soft eject it has your standard mechanical piano key controls it definitely could use a cleaning in there I noticed it has a permanent magnet erase head so that's a little bit of a letdown but it does have full auto stop including in fast forward and then rewind but I noticed the auto stop on rewind works when there's no tape in there but when you do put a tape in there and try to rewind it it does not auto stop so that could be a sign that the belts are getting weak and when it reaches the end it just slipping on the pulley so it looks like this stereo system could be fully working if I just replace a couple belts the door is removable to give you better access to clean the heads although now that I see it there's almost no point to removing it because it doesn't really give you that much better access it does open up some room to adjust the azimuth of the head if you need to the cabinet is all plastic which is a bit cheap on the back we have spring terminals for the speakers which is a little bit unexpected for such a low end stereo system plus it's made by RCA so you would think it would have RCA speaker jacks but there are no RCA jacks anywhere on this because it does not have an aux input which is one let down of this system although there are ways around that which I'll demonstrate later it also has a permanently attached FM antenna it's difficult to read this text that's embossed into the plastic but it's rated for 8 ohm speakers it was manufactured in December 1994 and it's the RCA model RP-8520A which I can't really find any information about except that for some reason QVC still has it listed on their web site although obviously it's no longer available it's a bit overkill but this is the only screwdriver I have that's long enough to reach those deeply recessed screws that are holding this thing together there it is cracked open and one of the first things I noticed is that instead of using a tuning dial string the radio tuner is run by these plastic gears and the tuning dial indicator is driven by this long piece of plastic which has gear teeth on it and the whole thing is slathered in grease so I guess it works but it just looks kind of cheap and sooner or later all this grease is going to get sticky and need to be cleaned out and replaced but at least for now it's still working and there you can see the built-in ferrite bar loopstick antenna for AM and the FM wire antenna attaches here otherwise nothing too special of the radio tuner circuitry here's the cassette tape mechanism and as you can see from the sticker with their logo on it it's a genuine tanashin mechanism it has a metal flywheel and it has a genuine mabuchi motor so this thing could have pretty decent quality at least compared to the cheap knockoffs they're making these days there is the recording circuitry for the cassette deck and that's the AC bias oscillator coil so even though it has a permanent magnet erase head it does have AC bias recording and this belt definitely looks a bit loose here's what happens when I rewind the tape and it reaches the end you can see it's slipping so it definitely needs a new belt here's the belt which opens and closes the CD drawer and it's definitely slipping as well because that motor is still running see I just stalled it so that belt needs to be replaced the question is how do I get to it I think this thing should unclip yeah that side unclipped and what about the other side aha I think I managed to pop the whole thing off they put the belt under a protective clear plastic window question is can I pop that off as well now the question is do I have access to replace that belt because it has to go on top of this gear I think there's latches you can release to totally remove the door so let me try that okay the door is off the tray I should say but does that improve anything in terms of replacing that belt this thing is in the way ah well that helps but we still don't quite have access to that belt but I think I should be able to just pry up this gear enough to slip the belt underneath it but there's still this how this post here is going to get in the way of that okay I managed to pop off that gear so now question is do I have enough wiggle room to get this thing out of here yep and there's the belt now good luck getting that all back together when I put the new belt on okay well some prying I was able to get that gear back on with a new belt attached to it I didn't get it on camera because my fingers would have just been in the way the whole time anyway now I just need to hook it on the motor pulley and hopefully that's all going to work I'm not going to bother reinstalling this clear plastic thing I don't see the point of it I managed to reinstall the tray you can't forget to put this thing back on now the moment of truth will this thing play a CD I don't have any speakers hooked up at the moment but I can at least see if it tries to work so close the drawer it's spinning up now it says track one track two how many tracks are on this CD there are 12 tracks track three four five six seven eight seems to be working and that's returning to track one and that's stop and that's eject so I believe I fixed the CD player now we can finally listen to this thing play a CD and I'll give you a direct hookup sample of what that sounds like thankfully replacing the belts on the cassette mechanism is going to be a lot more straightforward you just have to remove this one screw holding the motor in place and then you'll have easy access to the belts the new belts are installed and now the auto stop works properly when rewinding the wow & flutter is pretty much what I expected around 0.12 to 0.13 percent WRMS and hovering around 0.2 percent peak and the speed is close enough to correct I wouldn't bother adjusting it
it's around 3011 to 3012. it's supposed to be 3000 so that's within about half a percent that's close enough to the correct speed you wouldn't notice any difference now I'm ready to put this thing back together there are plastic guides in the case to help you align the circuit board with where it's supposed to go now it's properly aligned and now it fits together I just gotta screw it back together with that extra long screwdriver it's now all back together and sounding great "it's important to inhale through your mouth to make sure that enough oxygen reaches your hard-working muscles" "...took her tape recorder from that hospital and traveled all over the world recording parents as they talked to their very little babies and it didn't matter whether the parents spoke a romance language or a tone language everywhere she went below the words she heard consistently the same melodies" "oh yeah I'll tell you something I think you'll understand for the sake of sanitation you better wash your hands you better wash your hands you better wash your hands" I was really impressed with this thing's quality when recording from CD to cassette the automatic level control seems to do a very good job and even with that permanent magnet erase head it doesn't have too much background hiss so I'll give you a direct hookup sample of what that sounds like "The Great Gatsby is the brilliant and strongly symbolic work of F Scott Fitzgerald in this great work of art F eloquently depicts the opulent lifestyle of upper class America during the Roaring Twenties how great is the Great Gatsby judge for yourself" "Daisy and her husband Tom who are both very rich and invite Daisy's cousin Nick who's not so rich over to East Egg and everyone has a drink the next day Tom is tired of counting his money so Tom and Nick drive to George's garage to pick up George's wife Myrtle who was also Tom's mistress so they can all go to New York for a party but Tom gets into a fight with Myrtle Myrtle steps out of line Tom breaks her nose everybody has a drink then Gatsby the racketeering romantic with a sensational smile who is amassed amazing amounts of cash in the hopes of winning back his darling Daisy says old sport let's have some drinks at my place next Nick arranges a meeting between Daisy and Gatsby Daisy arrives in a white car she wears a white dress she sees all the white flowers she sees gets me who's wearing white she's overcome she says what my favorite color let's have a drink before you know what days in Gatsby spending many lazy hungover afternoons together next it's time for another mindless dinner party everyone is Rich everyone is bored so they drive to New York time drives Gatsby's car Gatsby drives time car time goes a bottle of whiskey and they go to The Plaza Hotel they have some drinks guess because everyone will support the whole gang gets splits on the way home Daisy drives Gatsby's guard Daisy does 100 and runs over Myrtle George one tree fence so George gets out his gun he walks around all night looking for the car that mashed Myrtle George walks back to West State finds the card gets these big white house walks up the big white stairs sees Gatsby in the big white pool and he pulls the trigger and that's the very last for Mr. Jay Gatsby" I promise to show you how you can add an aux input to this stereo system and here it is a car cassette adapter you may have a little bit of trouble sneaking the cable out of the door but otherwise there's no reason why you can't use this with any other kind of cassette player you just put it in the cassette player hit play and then you're ready to connect it to any line level audio source such as the pre-amp output of a turntable the disadvantage of using one of these is that it's using your cassette deck so if you want to record your vinyl to tape you're out of luck unless you use one of these an FM radio transmitter such as this sound feeder sf-120 it runs on a single AA battery it has a line level audio input a tuning dial a couple different tuning ranges selectable you just plug in your audio source adjust the tuning to the spot on the doll you want and pull out this little antenna and then you can put in a tape and recorded the tape from the radio in case you can't tell I really like this little stereo system once I got those belts for the CD player and cassette recorder sorted out its performance has exceeded my expectations it's a really neat little system for listening to the radio playing tapes and playing CDs be perfect for a bedroom or your workshop or whatever it's proof that you don't need to have a big fancy expensive stereo system to have fun listening to and recording music "you are about to experience samples of three-dimensional living sound first you will hear sound effects demonstrating how this new technology transports you into seemingly real environments you will now hear this 3D living sound technology applied to a program of nature sounds that is available to you to help you create a more favorable sleep environment"
2022-10-17 15:03
