the Toshiba KT-S1

taken on the Pentax k1000 using Kodak Ektar

By now you should all be well aware of my affinity for analogue technology.  My interest in Cassette tapes however, predates it all.  When I was little, my brother and I had a small children's cassette deck.  It had a chunky plastic yellow and red microphone, and an attractive blue shelled body with multicolored controls.  While we no longer have the deck, we do still have a couple of the tapes we made (now some 20 years later).  Having only one designated tape, we resorted to stealing my dad's type II cassettes and recording over whatever he had on there.  Over the years our use of cassette tapes matured.  CDs had taken hold of course, but they were difficult to record onto with our basic WinXP software.  My brother used a small memorex recorder to record his drum lessons, while I for the most part fell away from them.  Somewhere around 2010, we were just discarding the old tapes, unwinding them and seeing how much tape was inside.  As I was getting rid of these, it reinvigorated this nostalgia I didn't even know I possessed. 

For a long while I listened to my tapes on a Sony boombox, or the old Memorex, but desired a nicer piece of older technology.  Sony Walkmans were out of the question, as they were quite expensive, and by the time I was making any sort of money, Guardians of the Galaxy came out and thanks to Chris Pratt, became even more expensive.  A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a post online of a Toshiba KTS1, having always admired the Walkman DD series, I was very attracted to the large clear cassette door.  I nabbed a set of two broken ones off of ebay later that day for 60$, the second being a KTR2.  The recording model.  Both arrived later on, neither working.

The playback one fired up just fine with four new AA batteries.  It came with a tuner pack, a blue cassette tape that gave radio function.  The radio operated just fine, but I could hear the motor spinning on the tape setting.  My first inclination was to just use a rubberband to replace the old degraded belts.  Rubberbands turned out to be far too unstable and stretchy, so I sacrificed my brother's old Memorex for it's smaller belt.  (I ordered new belts, but they are backordered for three months.)

I'll put a new belt on the memorex

this was the rubberband, didn't work

I demaged the deck, and went through Joshua Tree and Midnight to Midnight.  It was a wonderful player, the stereo system worked great, it sounded great...until it began to play a bit sluggish.  I went to adjust the potentiometer, but all of the sudden it wouldn't work. 

the Dmag.

Midnight to Midnight 

So with a dead potentiometer, I decided the only thing I could do was replace it with the one from the recording deck.  The recorder wasn't functional without the battery door, and even so the power wouldn't make it to the motor.  I gave up on it early.  I opened the S1 once again and yanked the potentiometer out of it, and went to solder in the recorder one only to realize it had 3 pins, not 2.  Well, a lot of words came out of my mouth before I decided to bridge two pins with a staple soldered in place.  And what do you know, it worked.  I dialed in the speed and listened to a couple more albums that night.  The next morning, it was playing insufferably fast and the potentiometer wouldn't respond.  What the hell??

out with the two prong

in with the three (and staple)

The new pot kinda buckled the casing 

I was pretty much ready to give up at this point.  I was out of options, and pretty frustrated.  Luckily I found another for parts KT-S1 for sale on ebay.  This one was a little worse for wear, but looked immaculate inside.  I should mention the first one looked like it was pulled out of the swimming pool.  When the new one arrived, I demaged it, replaced the belt, and aligned the head.  Once I dialed in the proper speed (with two headphones, one electronic and one on the toshiba) it worked perfectly and still does.  I guess some things are just above my paygrade. 

And that was that.  I have been enjoying my audio quality very much.  I will note that it doesn't work well with composite headphones, i.e., ones with microphone and controls.  The extra fourth ring at the top of the jack interferes with the M- electrode in the female jack.  This electrode rides on the plastic ring, whereas a standard stereo male jack would have one large third m- segment above the left and right audio +.

Stay tuned while I repair a Sony Tc-560 Reel to Reel, a project I'm already several weeks in.  Looking real bad on that one (or should I say reel bad.)  Might need to rebuild a circuit on the record amp or the bias circuit.  Nothing is ever easy.

DONE!

There's my Sony.  Plays just fine, won't record well.

Joshua Tree - U2

just for kicks here's the inside of the tuner pack.