Hitachi D-980 Cassette Deck Repair

[Q-Eight]

I have a very nice Hitachi D-980 cassette deck. Fairly high-end 3-head unit. It works pretty well other than the fact that whenever you turn it on, with or without a tape in it, in kicks into record and starts recording!! It's a solenoid fired play system. So it's auto/computer controlled I guess. It only does this if it's been OFF for more than 5 seconds. If you click it on/off really fast it will not do it.

What do you guys suppose it could be and could it be repaired?

 

[The Quadfather]

Sounds like a bad capacitor. Remove the case and power it up. wait until the problem disappears. Take a can of freeze spray (refrigerant) and spray components in the control circuit one at a time to isolate the problem. when you get down to the general area control the spray to do one drop at a time and drip the refrigerant onto the suspect components. When the problem reappears, allow the unit to warm up until it goes away. Then use spray to narrow down to a single part. Use of cardboard shields held in place during spraying recommended to help isolate faulty part. Replace defective part with new one being sure to observe polarity on capacitors. Also, look for foriegn objects on circuit board. While this is less common, I once found a sewing needle imbedded on the preamp board of an eight track player. It was causing a rather strong oscillation to appear causing erasure of tapes. Since the board was densely packed with components, the needle was hard to detect. I had spent several hours on it, trying to track down an oscillation that just didn't make sense. Good Luck

The Quadfather

I have a very nice Hitachi D-980 cassette deck. Fairly high-end 3-head unit. It works pretty well other than the fact that whenever you turn it on, with or without a tape in it, in kicks into record and starts recording!! It's a solenoid fired play system. So it's auto/computer controlled I guess. It only does this if it's been OFF for more than 5 seconds. If you click it on/off really fast it will not do it.

What do you guys suppose it could be and could it be repaired?

 

[Obbop]

Heck, I always beat on the thing with a massive fist until it either worked properly again or until it was obviously dead, then I went and bought a new one.

 

[Q-Eight]

Heck, I always beat on the thing with a massive fist until it either worked properly again or until it was obviously dead, then I went and bought a new one.

I did that with my last tape deck. It worked randomly, so I lost my temper and hit it. Worked great for 3 weeks then died again. Beat it again (hoping luck would still be with me) and it died completely.


Quadfather: It just does it once when you power the unit up. Press stop and leave it on, it acts fine. The problem only comes up on the first power up.

 

[timbre4]

Does this machine (like many top end decks) have a Timer function for recording or playback? Either the switch is in one of those positions or there is possibly intermittent contact that is not supposed to be happening...

 

[Q-Eight]

Does this machine (like many top end decks) have a Timer function for recording or playback? Either the switch is in one of those positions or there is possibly intermittent contact that is not supposed to be happening...

It does, but the button is OFF. Wouldn't unplugging the deck clear the "memory" ?

 

[timbre4]

I don't believe so; every implimentation I've seen was a simple mechanical slide switch. In this case unplugging would have no effect. If OTOH, it IS something programmed in the deck, I wouldn't want to be the one troubleshooting that.

Hopefully, it is something as simple as a failing component allowing current to the solenoid that drops it into Record event...