Repairing MZ-R909 and MZ-R900

[Larry NYC]

Hi,

I bought a R909 to use as a spare and it will not record and playback is slow in starting up. I opened it and found that the Ribbon cable to the magneto  head has snapped at the bend.

I purchased a R900 for parts and it has the same exact problem. Is this cable repairable and how? or are there still some parts around for purchase? Any advice would be helpful.

Larry

[NGY]

17 hours ago, Larry NYC said:

Is this cable repairable and how?

This is a small portable unit, therefore my (dirty makeshift) solution might not apply: I have fixed a couple of decks having similar problems with the OWH ribbon cable. What I did I salvaged a ribbon cable from an old inkjet printer. The thickness of this cable and the width of the copper wires inside were close to that of the OWH. Then I cut out a two wires wide piece (actually, four, but I used two pairs in parallel). From the original cable I removed the cracked piece, keeping about 5 mm-s next to the flat piece that went into the connector on the PCB, as well as another ~5 mm on the head itself. Then I soldered the replacement piece to these truncated ends, with a few mm overlap on both. Finally, applied some superglue between the plastic foils, to support the soldered joints, and wound a piece of capton tape around the "operation areas". Not that elegant, but worked.

[Larry NYC]

Thank you for that reply. I'm not sure I have the parts to do what you did nor the skill. My hope was that Sony still sold replacement parts for these devices and they were still available.

I guess that probably isn't the case, so therefore we have to do the hack to get this old stuff to work again.

I will eventually attempt your guidance instructions and see how that goes.

Thanks again.

larry

[Perus]

While awaiting my R909 to arrive I'm prepared to fix the overhead cable - if needed - and noticed the following way to repair it, any pros/cons with this way?

/Per