AIWA 3 Head Tape Deck (AD-F990) Part 3 - The End 

@Mike1984-lc9rh He owes you something?

It's easy to ship though.

This guy is super busy, I checked and yeah, he wasn’t taking on any more work

I believe he is really busy, I like it the way he does it all. I am always looking forward for a new video. (I have also a cassette deck with some issues, broken belts and a high tone Tru the outputs and headphone. No I have not a Aiwa in the mid 80's I was have a autoreverse deck of Aiwa) But as you where say he is so busy I think not he would have time and I must ship it from the Netherlands to England 😢 I hope much more videos will follow it looks me a great guy.

It’s a joy to see someone work!

It is getting harder and harder to find people with the skills and experience and who are willing to work on cassette decks. I am still doing it but I am in NZ so even further to send to, but I do get things coming in from different parts of the world for repair.

You're not alone. I can usually get a basic understanding of what's going on, but all the stuff with the compubrain flew over my head

I have not touched this sort of kit since the 90's and videos star recorders !!!. He has a very disciplined approach and visualisation of signal paths. The edit is just enough to keep us following his thinking without getting bored. I now know to avoid this deck and stick to my Reel - Reel. I wait for a service on a Teak 8 - 80.

@@Woffy. Sophisticated cassette decks can be a nightmare to fix or restore. Mark will have spent hours upon hours on this.

@@JamesE707 Certainly, that was my point about the abridged edit cutting between scope and sig gen. Thats a lot of work, If I had this sort of instruction at college I would not have cock up so much.

@@Woffy. Don't disagree with you at all Woffy. Kind wishes. James.

@@JamesE707 TC-645 Nice work James, I have one waiting on some love and a Teac 8 - 80 Nice robust mechanics. I am getting a bit sloppy these days and the blue smoke seems to be following me. These videos help me focus on my discipline and not wast time chasing half baked assumptions. Best wishes.

No repair today only change parts and all gone resycle binn

Oh dear!!! 😂

Why ?

Oh, I wouldn't call Mark a 'dying craftsman'...

@@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx apologies he’s not dying but the skills are dying, I thank him for sharing his knowledge with us.

@@chox2001 no they're not

I had a couple of them when they were new. one look inside, the first time one of them needed something doing, & I swore I'd never buy an aiwa again. dreadful construction, & a miracle that they achieved the performance they did, which wasn't all that anyway.

@@duncan-rmi I have repaired many Aiwa decks over the years, the higher spec models are a nightmare to work on as Mark has shown us. Nakamichi is another brand that is way over rated and they are not as reliable as you would think. I prefer the better decks from the Sony ES and Denon range, at least they are far easier to work on.

@@Barbarapape in my post above I mentioned me looking at that Aiwa machine against the Denon DRM710 that I bought and still have and has been totally reliable save a couple of drive belts. But I did compare it with an Nakamichi BX 1 and BX 2, which were low spec compared with the Denon. I rejected the Aiwa because I thought it gimmicky and I thought the horizontal buttons would collect dust. I really dodged a bullet not getting the Aiwa. Also, I worked for the BBC as an Engineer at time and we were buying the DRM 710s.

@@G8YTZ If you want reliability and long life, Denon are hard to beat. I found Nakamichi to be very disappointing with gears that split and mechanisms that required regular rebuilds, the "Dragon" was well named.

@@Barbarapape Interesting, I've never owned a Nak, but looks like that's another I dodged! A friend has a BX2 I might ask him about it.

its built like crap

@@BenState I don't agree, AIWA equipment was made to provide more music for less money than the competition, with a lot of goodies that other companies didn't have, in addition, without a ton of pointless lights that at a certain period began to appear in competing companies (when I remember the neighbor's SONY tower - after switching on, it lit up like the whole Christmas market). I only had AIWA tape decks, the legendary 3-head M700 that I had at home was even used as a studio tape deck on Czechoslovak television (I personally counted 13 of them in that rack), incredibly fast and precise mechanics, micro-lift, possibility of synchronization, etc. AIWA was simply done differently, the large number of interconnecting wires made it possible to simplify the PCB and thus make production cheaper (today, thanks to advances in PCB manufacturing technology, it would be the other way around) without limiting the sound quality. Some functions or features were almost visionary, but unfortunately wear and tear took their toll on them - therefore, it is not so easy to repair some more complex machines. Mark handled it like a professional - from diagnosis, through parts production to overall commissioning - Mark is not a repairman, Mark is a service genius.

@@Edisson. despite all this, it's cheaply built, thus my comment.

I agree 100% This AD990 thing was either poorly designed while someone was sitting on the toilet bowl, or their components supplier was hitting the rufies while on the time clock.

It's an AIWA. LOL. Those are noodles, not spaghetti! It's a brilliant piece of electronic design, trying to get HiFi performance consistently out of cassette tape at an (almost) affordable price. Unfortunately, at that price, the production engineering can't match the electronics. If this had been built by HP or Tektronix then it would have been 19 inch rack sized with plug in boards and extenders for servicing - and would have cost as much as your house.

My wall would of had the tape deck sticking out of it.

Awesome !

I'm an electronics tech and one of the few that I know who still repairs cassette decks. Most techs won't touch them now but I will. What I am seeing with a lot of these high-end models from the 80s and 90s is the semiconductors (especially the ICs) are failing in them and many are proprietary custom chips that are no longer available. Sometimes there's a way around it but in most cases there isn't and once the part fails, that's the end of the deck - especially if it controls something critical like the transport mechanism.