jim.hoggarth

Excellent and beautiful young lady. From Greece originally, if I recall correctly. I played that CD to death for several weeks, until I moved on to more recently acquired material. Still keep going back, though. If you are/were ever into the Rolling Stones, you must hunt down some Admiral Freebee, When I first heard them/him I immediately thought it was ol' Rubber Lips himself, but I actually prefer the Admiral. Very nice mix of styles, actually, not just the Blues. I must update that list sometime... Jim

I have quite a few scrap 702s in stock, plus a box-full of brand new laser units. You are lucky that the fault is not the usual TOC error, caused by a split in the helical gear on the business end of the sled drive shaft. Nearly every Sharp from that era I see has that fault. Your recorder can be fixed (blatant advert for my services). Jim

If the disc is erased, it is the overwrite head at fault. If the disc comes out exactly as it went in, it is the laser. Either way, it is a job for an engineer not a user. Sorry. Jim

The old, bulky, AC-MZR55 is transformer based, not SMPS. Presumably you don't have a multimeter / voltmeter? The usual reason for these to fail is the thermal fuse on the transformer primary. If you can't do a resistance/continuity test on the mains input, try using a plastic-handled screwdriver as a stethoscope. Put the metal shaft on to the top of the adapter body, and place the plastic handle into/against the ear hole. Turn on teh mains, and you should hear a 50Hz (UK) or 60Hz (US) low frequency mains buzz. If not, the fuse has blown. Goodbye adapter. The next possible cause is the power cable going open circuit. Usually this happens at the adapter body end, as it exits the plastic strain-relief sheath. You can often see physical damage to the cable here. Caused by winding/unwinding the cable from around the adapter body too often (that will teach you to be neat and tidy!) Another possible is that the yellow plastic end cap has come away from the 3v plug end, and got jammed in the R70's power socket so the adapter plug no longer goes all the way home, so cannot make contact. Without a multimeter there's not much more you can do but guess. Beg/borrow a multi-adapter and try it on your R70? Jim

Hi. The usual cause of all C13 errors is the spindle motor not running up, for one of three reasons: i) The motor is broke ii) The motor drive chip on the BD board is broke iii) The optics can't do an initial focus on the disc - the optical pickup is broke. Fiddling with things can make the fault go, as can leaving it for hours/days. That would normally indicate a faulty spindle motor. Jim

This is independent of the SP/DIF. It's output anyway, not input. Using the remote you can set the 'A' mark, and then press again for the 'B' mark. In theory the machine then cycles through the same A-B section ad infinitum until the repeat button is pressed or a new A-B section is defined, carrying on from the end of the last 'B' mark. But on replay, there is a good half second pause before the section is repeated. I suppose the question is pretty academic anyway, as the only reason you would need a seamless continuation is in looping for musical effect and there are other ways to achieve this. A wannabee rock-god will presumably just be happy that they can repeat the guitar solo from 'Comfortably Numb' bar-by-bar until they have learned it by heart, anyway. Jim

Ian. Just tried this on a JE510, and even though you say it doesn't do it, this model inserts a pause between the A and B points. That even applies if the gap between A and B is only a second or so, which rules out some form of delay due to seeking the audio data start point as it should all be coming from buffer. The JE530 showed exactly the same half-second or so gap. Are you sure on this? Jim

The stock remote is the RM-MC33EL silver. This model can also be got in black. The RM-MC11EL will also work, but this does not have group +/- buttons. This is a silver remote with backlight. The black version, without backlight, is the RM-MC10L. The RM-MC35EL and RM-MC38EL should also work, as they are the same basic remote with extended support for Kanji characters etc. Not sure about any of the more recent remotes such as the 40ELK, but definitely don't bother looking at remotes older than the MC11EL/MC10L as they are not compatible. Jim

Any idea roughly at what model this gap may have appeared? Might save me some time checking everything. I have loads of JE480s in stock at present - would it affect this one? Jim

Hi Ian I stand to be corrected by some other expert, but I believe every deck has A-B repeat. It's part of the firmware from day one. Whether they all have the feature available from the front panel or the remote control is another thing, but I am sure even the thinnest of MD remotes has the A-B function? As for a gap, can't say I have ever noticed. How long is the gap? Microseconds or something silly like a second or two? If you ask nicely I will do some experimentation as and when I get individual decks on the bench. I have a JE510 and JE530 in front of me now, and should have an M100 out soon (although the M100 is basically the same as the JE520 and S40/S41 IIRC). Jim

The pictures tell you all you need to know, actually. Sequence is: pop the end off (hopefully without damaging), remove the two metal retaining pieces, pull off the rotary control, remove spring, remove plastic trim with 'Sony' logo, remove two tiny screws, and finally remove larger screw at the cable end. Carefully prise open the casing using a thin plastic tool, hopefully without breaking all the plastic clips. Reassembly is obviously the reverse. I damaged several remote controls until I finally got the right tools and the right techniques to open a remote without breaking it and/or making it obvious it had been opened. And don't spray the rotary contacts with WD40 as suggested, just wipe with a cotton bud soaked in alcohol or methylated spirits. Make sure you lubricate these contact points again, I use petroleum jelly. And good luck - you will definitely need it. Jim

Hi. Obviously I can't be 100% definite, but I reckon this is the optical pickup. A laser adjust may help, but it's more likely a replacement OP is needed. It don't think it is the overwrite head - you get a different type of error when this is faulty. What is happening here is something like the laser can't focus on the disc to find the right place to write the updated TOC. The firmware won't give up at this point, as writing the TOC is so critical. It just gets stuck in a loop. I have often wondered why failure to write the TOC is so prevalent. I think it may have something to do with the TOC being at the extreme inside of the disc, as this is where the disc is spun at its fastest rate (data is written at a constant linear velocity). Perhaps this causes any slight maladjustment or out-of-spec component to fail more readily? Jim

Excellent machine, although I do prefer the styling of the R91. I find the R90 to be a quite ugly beast. The R90 and R91 are electronically identical. The only major difference is that the R90 has a magnesium alloy front casing, which is a hell of a lot stronger than the R91's thin metal front case. Maybe that's why I rarely get to see the R90, whereas I have a box full of R91s that are bent and broken! I actually like the sound of the R90/91, but then my ability to differentiate between good and not so good is, well, not so good! These recorders can be bought quite cheaply now, although you have to be careful as there are a lot of badly damaged units out there. As already stated, the cases bend easily. The machine also does not like having batteries left in it for any length of time - most R91s I see have badly corroded battery contacts. But it doesn't suffer from the sled gear warping like the R700/R900 etc. The good points of the recorder are a microphone input and a switchable headphone/line output. The fact that it doesn't do MDLP is no problem for me. I recently managed to pick up a red R91 in mint condition, which is now carefully stored away with two more mint condition R91s - a blue one and a white one. If anyone thinks they are getting these, they will have to tear them from my cold, dead hands! Jim

Extra time can indeed be added to the end of a track, for one or more tracks: 1) Create a silent track of sufficient total length 2) Divide this track into 2-second (or as required) sub-tracks using the track mark or A-B divide facility repeatedly 3) Move each successive stub of silence between consecutive music tracks 4) Merge each 2-second stub with the previous music track Note, however: 1) This may not work with tracks some recorded via NetMD 2) Each stub must be recorded in the same format as the intended target track (Mono, SP, LP2 etc) 3) There may be some arbitrary limit to how many edits can be done, apart from the usual track count limits 4) This will give your sled motor a really good work out, as it will seek from end of track to end of disc for each track If the tracks can be copied off, edited, and re-recoded without too much loss of audio quality that would probably be a better long-term solution. Jim

Hi Johnny. Does it have to be the JE470? What specific features do you need? Jim

The distortion will probably be the output transistors in the audio IC clipping as they saturate to the power lines, or perhaps my earphones (which are only the cheap Sony jobs which came with the first ever portable radio I bought. Always used them, they just seem to fit my lugs now).

As I suspected, removing R112 and R212 makes an obvious difference to the overall volume. What you effectively get is the US model, without the volume limiting required for the European and other markets. I wouldn't suggest removing anything else but these two resistors - they are the two outer ones of the run of four. With these removed the volume is almost unbearable at maximum, with obvious distortion starting to be heard. But, you are going to need a very good soldering iron, some solder braid, fine multicore solder and a steady hand. Even I found it difficult going, and I have been wielding soldering irons since I was ten years old (a long, long time ago)! Jim

Hi walkdude. The only way I can see is to remove, change or short out resistprs. You will need the service manual here: http://minidisc.org/manuals/sony/service/sony_MZ-R500+R500PC_service_manual.pdf Look at page 44. The DAC outputs are fed to the headphone amplifier IC302 via resistor dividers. Left channel is via R103, with R107 to 'ground' (actually a bias point from IC302, but you can regard it as analogue ground). For non-US models R112 is in parallel with R107, reducing its value slightly and thus reducing the maximum volume. The right channel is similar with resistors R203, R207 and R212. To increase volume slightly you can just remove the resistors R112 and R212. Removal is going to be a darn sight easier than replacing or shorting out resistors, unless you are very experienced at soldering. You wait 'til you see the size of these components! To increase volume even further you could try increasing the value of R107 and R207. The maximum increase in volume will be obtained by removing R107/207 entirely so that the input impedance of the amplifier is all that loads the signal down to ground. Finding R107/207 and R112/212 is easy. They are on the underside of the main board, at the end of the line input jack socket. Refer to the circuit board layout on page 40. But if you damage your circuit board, please don't blame me. I am just going to get an R500/501 out now to remove these components and see what difference it makes. I will report back. Jim

You know I did think of something along these lines, and I am glad you have confirmed it. Unfortunately that will be fine for my own own use, but I don't think it will impress customers who purchase renovated N10s from me. So it looks like I am paying a hefty whack for new batteries, or just scrapping perfectly good N10 machines for parts!

I think netmduser was already comparing AA-based with AA-based, such as N510 with NH600. Gotta get a new battery for my micrometer now Jim

Of course, if you can find a faulty unit that won't record but plays and talks via USB for $50 or so, that would be a cheap solution. (Not that I'm trying to off-load some of my junk!) Jim

The MC33L, MC33EL, MC38EL etc all suffer from the earphone socket being soldered directly onto the remote circuit board with relatively no other support. An unfortunate knock or bend on the earphone plug can cause enough twisting/shearing force to break the copper tracking pad that the socket is soldered on to. At the moment whenever I get this problem, board replacement is my solution. I have kept hold of all the damaged boards in case I think up a solution, but for now haven't bothered finding one. The problem is, so little copper is left on the board, resoldering is not practical. The solution will probably be to glue the socket back down and run very fine wire connections to the solder pads. But, as I say, it's one of those jobs that will just have to wait. Jim

Thanks for that technical info, it will come in useful. Using the N510 service manual as a reference, I see that the bass boost feature of this amplifier is disabled (at least in this model, so I assume all). The standard bass boost employed by Sony is obviously implemented as part of the ATRAC decoding routine. Incidentally, this is the chip which causes the earphone signal cutting out problem on some models, primarily the R700 and G750. The chip mounting method allows cracked solder joints to develop, especially as the audio amplifier IC is mounted close to the remote control / earphone socket (naturally) which is subjected to minute flexing as the plug connection is 'wobbled' through day-to-day use. Early attempts by Sony to fix this problem included a layer of glue (very hard, almost like a 'cascamite' style wood glue) over the pins of the amplifier IC. This of course makes it impossible to desolder and resolder, so affected boards are as good as useless and must be discarded. Another fix was to jam a block of hard rubber up against the chip, between the board and bottom casing. This didn't cure the problem totally either. Later models suffered less as the remote port was often better secured and the audio IC moved to a different location. It is possible later board were stiffer, also. Jim

Interesting comment. I also get the impression the NH600 is a tad chunkier than, say, the MZ-N510. If I find time today I will do a comparison, and get out my faithful micrometer. It is well known, at least it is to me, that the plastic based NetMD models (including the N710/NF810, for which these are notorious) often crack about the screw holes. Perhaps Sony learned a lesson and made the NH600/700/800/900 etc bulletproof? Jim

The headphone amp is the Toshiba TA2131. As far as I am aware, it was used in every Sony minidisc player and recorder starting with the R70 first introduced in 2000, through to the first Hi-MD models. Can't be absolutely sure as my service manuals are on another computer, but I am confident this is right. Jim