This holiday, between revising for the mock exams, I’ve found time to get a micro cassette recorder that used to belong to my great grandfather working.
I think it’s a model from the 80s, but I haven’t been able to find an exact date.
I was able to get it working by attaching 4.5v across the barrel jack connector, but it wouldn’t work with batteries inserted. It turned out that the cable connecting to the battery compartment’s negative side had broken, so I opened it up to solder it back on. One of the battery contacts was also missing, so I replaced it with a staple I soldered on.
After this the other contacts had too much corrosion on them to work reliably, so I coated them in a layer of fresh solder.
After making these changes it seems to work fairly well. The quality of the audio improved after I cleaned the tape head with isopropyl alcohol, but it still isn’t great – I suppose you can’t expect much from something that’s been gathering dust for 40 years!
It still seems to be able to record as well. Here’s a video of it playing a song after recording it:
Brychan Thomas' projects 