If you purchased the Walkman from me, or I completed repairs – DO NOT attempt repairs yourself without first consulting me! Many online tutorials are confusing, or meant for a different type of Walkman than yours, and I have seen too many times where a customer ruins a Walkman trying to self repair. I take no responsibility for botched repair attempts. Contact me at matt@corbycreative.com
SET YOUR EXPECTATIONS: these are a vintage product made with precision plastic and rubber parts that have aged. Patience is needed to learn how to get the best sound from them. Don’t hesitate to ask me questions. Most issues are caused from not being clean or bad cassettes (see details in the sections below). Some Walkmans have a muddy or fluttery sound due to age, or that’s how they sounded from new. Different people are more or less sensitive to a muddy or fluttery sound. If you purchased a Walkman from me, refer to the video from the eBay listing – the music samples are chosen strategically to hilight the flaws in a Walkman. The piano parts hilight flutter, and the cymbal and hi-hat parts hilight muddiness. If you believe your purchased Walkman has degraded since you purchased from me, see below, or email me for assistance.
CLEAN REGULARLY: Cassettes will shed small amounts of debris, and especially so 20+ year old cassettes. This means that your Walkman will need to be cleaned more often than maybe you did if you owned one in the 80’s when most cassettes were new.
PLAYBACK HEAD: If the sound becomes muffled, most often, the cause is a dirty playback head. Sometimes you can see the dirt in the form of tiny brown fragments of tape “shedding”. Sometimes the dirt is too small to see. Use IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) or plain water to clean using a q-tip that is stroked lengthwise across the head, GENTLY, for 20-30 seconds. Then dry off with a dry q-tip, and check for any leftover q-tip strands.
PINCH ROLLER(S): If a cassette is “eaten”, that is, the tape gets bunched up into a ball, that is usually because the pinch rollers are dirty. The pinch rollers do not need cleaning as often as the playback head, and cleaning them more than monthly (or weekly, with heavy use) is probably overkill, as too much cleaning can prematurely dry them out. Cleaning with a q-tip and very slightly soapy water, then drying off, is a more gentle clean. Cleaning them with alcohol is for more stubborn dirt. Denatured alcohol helps preserve better, but IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) can be used sparingly).
CAPSTAN(S): If you hear a fluttering sound, like listening to the music through a fan, that is often caused by dirty capstans. Clean the capstans with water or IPA and a q-tip, taking care to remove any left-over q-tip strands. Some Walkmans naturally have a bit of flutter due to age, or that’s how they were from newly manufactured.
STORE PROPERLY:
Play at least once every 2-3 months. Extended periods of non-use can cause internal grease to cement to parts internally, and internal rubber parts to get “dimpled” causing sound quality issues. If you have stored for a long time and neglected to run it, usually several button presses and running it through it’s paces for a few minutes will get it back into shape. But not always!
NEVER STORE WITH BATTERIES! This is the number one killer of Walkmans. Batteries can leak acid when stored for several months at a time, and often there is no saving a Walkman from this type of damage.
Store in a temperature and climate controlled area, like inside the living areas of your home. Storage in a hot car on a sunny day can ruin the Walkman in one day. Storage in freezing cold temperatures can do the same by causing the older plastic to crack internally. Storage in a humid environment like a basement can cause rubber parts to mold.
MANY CASSETTES ARE BAD:
BAD FOAM PAD: Especially on cassettes from the mid 80’s and earlier. If you look at the part of the cassette where the Walkman’s playback head engages, you SHOULD see a small foam pad. This is essential for playback. If the foam pad is overly crooked, missing, or loose, your cassette will not sound right at all. There are cassette foam pad kits available on eBay to replace the foam pads and get your cassette working properly again.
LACK OF LUBRICATION: Especially on cassettes from the mid 80’s and earlier. Cassettes are made with a VERY small amount of lubrication between the tape and the cassette shell. On many older cassettes, the lube has dried up and become sticky. When this happens, it may play fine in a big cassette deck, but a small Walkman, which has weaker motors to extend battery life, may not play it properly. You may have these cassettes play slowly, or more often they will auto-stop when it’s not the end of the cassette. These cassettes will need lubrication, which is a difficult task, and beyond the scope of this article. Improperly lubricating a cassette risks ruining your cassette, and contaminating your Walkman.
POORLY RECORDED: This is NOT just cassettes recorded from home…
Early 80’s and older, especially 70’s: early on, cassettes were not an “audiophile” music format. Many cassettes just did not sound good, even when new. It wasn’t until the early 80’s when audiophile cassette decks came out that most sounded good compared to vinyl.
Home recorded: Cassettes that were recorded on someone’s home cassette player can be identified usually by hand-written labels. Home cassette recorders and the skill of the person recording, varies widely from far surpassing that of professionally recorded cassettes, to (unfortunately more often) sounding very poor, usually either with extremely blown-out loud volume, or quiet volume and excessive tape hiss.
Recording music on a Walkman of any kind is not recommended. Even if you read on the internet that it’s the BEST recorder – it is not. Walkmans that record are best used for recording voice with a microphone. Even the amazing Sony WM-D6C cannot compete with a mid-range 3 head full sized cassette deck for recording.
MOLD: If you see white splotches, or what looks like a white powder, on the inside of the cassette tape, this is MOLD. It comes from storage in humid conditions. It will sound terrible, and could scratch your playback head or transfer mold to other cassettes. Don’t think – just throw it in the trash!
CHEWED UP TAPE: If your cassette has some very garbled parts, stop the tape, take it out, and look where the tape contacts the playback head. You will probably see wrinkles on the tape. There is no fix for this, and you just have to deal with it. Some cassettes have been chewed all the way through the entire tape, and some are chewed so badly that it will cause a good Walkman to “eat the tape” again.
BROKEN TAPE: if you look where the tape contacts the playback head, but see no tape, that means that the tape has broken, or become disconnected from one of the reels. It is possible to fix this with cassettes that are screwed together rather than bonded together. Try watching YouTube for some methods to repair.
CHECK YOUR BATTERIES:
Modern products just stop working completely when batteries are drained. Older analog products are not the same. They will play, but play POORLY with a slow or dull sound, or stop randomly, when batteries are low. If you are having issues, first thing to try is replacing or charging your batteries.
Some Walkmans use AA “regular” batteries”. Other Walkmans use the rectangular “gumstick” batteries. Search on eBay for “gumstick battery”. I have had good luck with the generic looking green gumstick batteries with Kastar branding. You will also need a gumstick battery charger – just search eBay for “gumstick battery charger”.
MUDDY or DULL SOUND:
See the “MANY CASSETTES ARE BAD” and “CLEAN REGULARLY” sections first.
Incorrect switch settings is a common cause of muddy or dull sound. Turn OFF the Dolby switch – most cassettes have slightly faded volume from age, or are poorly recorded, and in that case, Dolby will very much muddy the sound. If in doubt of your cassette “type”, switch it from CRo2 or Metal to NORMAL – 95% of all cassettes are this type, and will provide the most clear sound. If your Walkman does not have either of these switches, then they either have automatic detection of NORMAL/CRo2/METAL, or have no Dolby feature.
If you are sure that the playback head is clean, and the cassette is not bad, then most likely the “azimuth” is off. Most Walkmans made in late 80’s and beyond are fixed azimuth, meaning it cannot be easily adjusted. If you have an older Walkman that is adjustable azimuth, the azimuth adjustment can be done, and requires good technique to be done properly. Send me a message and we can decide whether it’s best that I walk you through the steps, or you send to me for adjustment.
One way to tell if it’s poor azimuth that’s causing a muddy sound, is if you press in on the cassette door right by the playback head in the right way (but not TOO hard, remember, these are delicate!) and the sound becomes more clear, then it’s probably an azimuth related issue.
