Playback Speed Help!

[James Moniz]

I have a sony md je 480. I messed something up and now the

playback sounds like a chipmunk. Please advise how to fix.

 

Thank You!

[kgallen]

Give us more information. Like what did you do to awaken the chipmunks?

480 doesn’t have a pitch shift function that I can see in the UM. 

[BearBoy]

My first thought was something to do with pitch control but I had a quick look at the manual and, as Kevin says, it doesn't look like the MDS-JE480 has that functionality.

Had you accessed the service menu before this became an issue James?

Is the playback just high pitched? Or sped up? Or both?

[NGY]

14 hours ago, James Moniz said:

playback sounds like a chipmunk

 

8 hours ago, BearBoy said:

Is the playback just high pitched? Or sped up? Or both?

I also wanted to ask how really the playback sounds? Does it have to do with the pitch/speed, or, it has to do with the audible frequency range? (I am not sure I ever heard a chipmunk singing)

The reason I am asking is because years ago I had a very strange case. (I know, I know ... I am coming again with my weird stories ...)

I was working on an old and badly beaten 510. I managed to fix practically everything, and the deck seemed working just like new. Then I connected it to an amp... and got astonished. All what I heard was a thin, somewhat distorted voice, missing all the basses, some of the low mids, and partly the high frequencies too. Sounded like an old transistor pocket radio (or worse). I was sure it had nothing to do with the digital part of the deck, so I went on poking around in the analogue section. And found this (do take a close look on the photos):

  

The solder joints of the RCA connectors were cracked.

(We call it "cold solder", I am not sure what is the proper English expression for this. It happens when the leads to be soldered were not clean, or were oxidized, or the solder was not hot enough, or there was insufficient flux during the process, etc., resulting a bad solder joint, that cracks over time. Although the RCA sockets are mounted on the back plate with a screw, still the central pins have some degrees of freedom to move back and forth in the plastic centre when plugging/unplugging a cable, and that can speed up cracking the solder joint.)

After resoldering, the sound became normal again:

  

 

 

 

[kgallen]

Good call @NGY. ‘Dry joint’ is what I’d know a bad joint as. However in your example I think that’s a stress fracture. But I think they have the same consequence - a poor and highly resistive joint. Sounds like you had yourself a solder joint low pass filter!

[Another MD fanatic]

Yes, "Dry joint" is what we call it here in the UK. Looking at the original pics I think these are bad joints rather than stress fractures. if you look closely you can see most of the solder is on the pins, there's not much at all on the pads. Looking at the "after" pics I think NGY is a dab hand with a soldering iron!