walk man, walk!!!!

i finally rebelted the goddam walkman.

i have had a sony wm-f701C for six or seven years now but always been too intimidated to rebelt it. i finally bought the belt the other day as i had just bought a tape of a record i also bought as a vinyl and as a cd. i have a tape deck in my living room, but also a pickup; and i use the pickup a lot more often anyway. plus, the cd was going in my car anyway.... so therefore, the idea was "lp for the house, cd for the car, tape for elsewhere"... but i needed to fix the elsewhere machine.....

the belt itself was easy to find, though a tad expensive. still, better to buy peace of mind than to pay with time and damaged gear for a bundle of three hundred rubber bands for eight bucks... albeit the belt i bought was $15 plus another so much for shipping. still, not a problem for mr. employed over here i guess.

i sat down to do the operation and taking it apart was super straight-forward. six screws in total, one of them doubling as the screw that holds down the case locking mechanism together. also had to watch out with the spring there.... more on that later........

putting the belt on was also straightforward, as i had a diagram (the previous pages have the (dis)assembly instructions), and so i went through the hard part of trying to close it back up.......

the instructions linked above state that you should put the locking mechanism together first of all. now, after having put it together, it is obvious that this is just not necessary nor probably the easiest thing to do, since you can't screw the arm and the spring together into anything stable. anyway, in many failed attempts at putting them together....... i lost the spring. fawkes, if you step on a little silver spring, please let me know. i looked everywhere but it is nowhere to be found. still, it isn't necessary... it just makes the closing mechanism actually close smoothly when you close the lid... now it might need a moment to latch on is all. also, the stop/pause button was loose and was also a pain to put together. both with the locking arm and the stop button i employed the use of tactical painter's tape.

oh, and also, in the midst of it all being put together the first time, the belt got a bit unseated... so i had to take it apart again. thankfully now that i knew all the tricks, it was very quick. thank god the machine stops at the faintest bit of resistance, otherwise i would've certainly had to buy another $30 belt.

anyway, and so what do me efforts get me? something pretty cool... it presently has some tape warble; which, with the tired of tomorrow cassette i am currently listening to, i don't really mind it at all. it's quite fitting. and also it only seems to affect the mids- voices, guitars, piano... so, in this shoegaze environment, quite cool. though, i will probably take it apart and make sure the belt is seated flatly (it's a square belt, not flat or round one), as i am sure there are some cassettes that won't appreciate the warble. actually, the test cassette i had in this was a bob dylan one that was on a guitar/vox only song, and it just sounded sped up. and last i checked, i am not into chipmunk core or whatever the hell.... so, off i pop it back open. i may update this once i get that sorted.

also, the headphones for this are pretty quirky, and they're mandatory. i guess i may have a small head, cos they don't really go in my ears, but i have found out that wearing a hat solves the issue.

if anyone is curious, this link here is on a discussion that mentions the pain of reassembling the locking mechanism.

update: in depeche mode's violator the tape warble is so fitting i didn't even notice it until i realised a certain synth doesn't sound so shaky usually... vox aren't warbly at all though in this. neat.