My First Sony Cassette-Corder Teardown

ID: 1251

Description: I've had this since I was 3, I think. Anyway it...

Steps:

1. Here we have a 'my first Sony' cassette player with a microphone
2. It can even take a second microphone, sold seperately of course
3. Main microphone plug
4. Secondary Microphone plug

5. This model uses four C-cell batteries, these have been in here since I was 10, hmmm... wonder if there's any juice left?
6. Time to take the batteries out
7. Push down at one end of each row of batteries towards the spring
8. With the tension released pull out on the battery until it comes out
9. Repeat until all four are removed
10. Thumbs up to Sony for providing nice visual instructions for those kiddies

11. To remove the red back cover you need to remove six screws placed around the border of the cover. Note! The bottom 2 screws are longer than the other 4. These 2 are 35mm long whilst the other 4 are only 30mm long. Don't mix them up !
12. And voilà! Now we have a nice view of all the internal components

13. Remove one screw to take off the rear part of the carrying handle
14. We also gain access to the rubber microphone holder

15. To remove the speaker first you'll need to get some slack on the wire, do this by pulling it out of a plastic holder thing
16. Proceed to to lift up the blue chassis and remove the four screws holding the speaker down
17. These screws also hold the yellow speaker grill to the front

18. It was a bit of a fight but I was able to pull the blue chassis out of the front piece of the red case
19. There were no fasteners holding them together

20. Take out three screws to remove the main circuit board
21. Then unplug four sockets attached to the circuit board
22. And here we have the only circuit board in this device, don't see any big processors on it, I guess I can't turn it into a super computer :(

23. After unplugging the circuit board we can completely remove the speaker
24. It packs a whopping 3 1/2 inch speaker

25. Remove four screws to loosen the tape drive chassis
26. Then pull up and back to take the chassis out
27. With the tape drive chassis on its own we can look at Sony's weird button system, we also have the blue chassis with no components on it

28. Take out two screws to remove the tape reader/writer

29. To take the microphone apart just pull very hard on the red handle and it will come out, its held on by two tabs
30. Take off the yellow cover by wedging a flathead screwdriver in the crack and prying it off
31. Now we can look at a little microphone, and surprisingly it even has its own windscreen

32. So here we have it all disassembled, and THERE WERE NO 'WARRANTY VOID' STICKERS ANYWHERE!!!