Sony TC-560D Reel to Reel Revival | Vintage Hifi Revival 

The VU meters came factory with that tape on stuck onto it too.

You have the nack my friend .. For never working on reel to reel taperecorders you could have fooled me. Yep, the Sony's from the 60's are hard to beat, real meaty and put together like commercial units. I recently picked up a real beast, the "Sony 600 Stereo" circa 1963. It's a hybrid (6 tubes & 6 geranium transistors) and a hefty 53 pounds! Haven't had at it yet but can't wait. I restore mostly vintage tube audio and tube Ham Radio equipment. Get some more my friend and you will be hooked. Cheers

Nice video, but a few safety related things made me cringe: - don't put 12VDC and 230/120VAC on the same DPST switch, like, EVER! The contacts inside the switch are likely very close together, which is totally unsafe. - don't ever disturb a solder joint after taking the iron away. That will guarantee a cold joint. - don't tin your wires if you're going to crimp them. It's extra work and will cause the connection to fail eventually, because solder keeps flowing ever so slowly, and will leave you with a loose connection. Either solder them or crimp them, never both. Also, to avoid drilling holes into your precious vintage tech, you might consider re-purposing existing holes for stuff you're not going to use, like e.g. that speed adjust jack. That way you can always undo your mods, just in case you do find the correct cable eventually. All that being said, I still enjoyed the video! Keep it up!

I have the TC-560, same transport but is a complete recorder and playback with speakers. One heavy beast! 52 pounds! But, it has a handle, so technically, it's portable! Ha! I have both cords for mine, it runs great on 12 volts, only pulls about 300 milliamps, just amazing. The only thing about these transports is the fast wind and rewind speeds are rather slow, due the the use of the 12 volt DC motor. However, the wow and flutter specs are darn good for a single motor deck. Thanks for the video.

Very nice work sir. It appears that you found a diamond in the rough. Your skills and patience rendered you large dividends. My first reel was a beautiful Sony TC-630D. Bought from a guy that needed some money back when I was a young Airman living in the barracks in the early 70's. I sold it in 1983 to upgrade to a Teac X-2000R that is still running strong and in mint condition. But I will always remember my "first love". Enjoy!!

This is so great to watch this video and serving this universe.

Very common to see clear tape on VU Meters from the factory build.

Damn good videography. Not to mention good examples of troubleshooting thought process and discovery...

I have , the exact model ,it has absolutely no wear or any dust inside and out .,was given to me by a friend ,with it came about 100 7 inch high quality tapes recorded with 60s to 80 s jazz mostly

The DC work around was a nice touch but open to future problems. I would have picked the AC connection. Just solder two wired to the each connection like you did the DC and plug it in. With your current DC connection you or someone else will use the wrong voltage or the wrong polarity DC and blow out your amplifier. Also in many cases a 2 pin AC plug can be shaped to fit over the proper AC pin connection or even a molex female connector with shrink wrap over it can work. Note if you do this, then un solder the DC connections of that socket so the AC does not get pugged into the DC connection in error.

I'm not often the first to comment! ... Beautiful machine, from when things were built to a standard, and not down to a price! ... Built to last! 👍

A few years ago I got a Sony TC-355 for parts or not working for $25. I had a TC-252 that I bought back in 1984 that had some major issues that I had to have the parts cleaned. The 252 is no longer in service but the TC-355 I got going just by loosening some parts and it sounds amazing. Great find for you. You'll love it. Great job.

Juuust Beautiful !!!!!

Sony usually used sellotape at that time to seal their meters from dust.

Really do enjoy watching your videos on the reel to reels I enjoy reel to reels a lot I like taking them apart and finding out how they work and putting them back together getting them to work better than ever one of my favorite things to do keep on making these videos on fixing these reel to reels I enjoy it a lot thanks Jim

Excellent repair! I hope to be this good someday.

Hi hifi jam. New sub here. Very enjoyable and educational video. Really enjoyed the explanation commentary. Look forward to going through some of your past videos.

"We'll have to figure out something about that", I'm stealing that.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1640">27:20</a> look at this front plate, it is chrome on plastic and many parts that look like metal have just thicker chrome on it, so there was chrome on plastic and of course more real metal aswell. Today they use just a much thinner layer of chrome. Really nice Mashine btw, it looks and eeven sounds good.

I picked up recently a 755 mk 1 in original box never used, belts in the post, thanks for the helpful video

Awesome repair

You drilled a hole on that panel??? Quick, I need a drink! I need to drink something older than me!!! 🤣🤣🤣

Love it! Own the same reel -to- reel.

Fabulous job 😊

These are full of idlers and pulleys and such. Get them right and they sound great. My Dad had a TC-355. I was never a fan of the scrape flutter pads, kind of a cheesy way of getting it done. I have been around reel to reels for years. Love reel to reels. Getting blank tape is not so easy new any way. Plus Biasing and Equalization to your favorite blank tape is always fun. Wow and Flutter on these were pretty good considering the many moving parts vs. a 3 motor reel to reel. You should try a 3 motor reel to reel. So nice and elegantly simple vs. the Sony and Akai mechanical ones. But pure fun if you can make them go. I would do it, but no space to work on these things. Fun to watch you bring them to life. Love your 3D print setups you have.

I’ve got a nice fostex 8 track reel to reel recorder from 2000. Even got some brand new blank reels still in the plastic. Need to get it out and record some stuff onto it. Cool video

Very nice work also good music taste =) Love cheers

good job

Tapes becoming rare.

Belts usually are disintegrated and needs to be replaced. The heads could be worn, but if you want to edit tapes, you could replace the heads by half track heads, so the tapes will be used in one direction only, but the noise is less. Another possible enhancement, when you doesn't need compatibility would be adding a dbx noise reduction. It's an external unit. In theory you could put a Dolby HX in, practically you have to be an expert with high skills.

Супер!!!!!

Excellent video with a lot of patience. I have a Sony TC560 which I bought it in Japan in 68" I used it until '80s and last year I started to use it again. The problem is the left speaker no sound I proceed and tested the speaker and the wiring is good. Can you help me? What's causing the speaker not receing the sound signal. Many thanks Frank 🙂

It's limited to 8" reels. But with double play tape, what is recommended for quarter track, you can play over 1 hour with 7.5 ips and with the half of this over 2 hours

I had 2 Sony TC 580's. Those were beasts and heavy AF. Recapped them both and replaced all the transistors. Then they got ruined in a flood. The model you have was a lower entry model to be honest. The Sony TC 377and its predecessor TC 366 were everywhere in the 1970s. They were made to be serviced pretty easily. Sony made a ton of different reel to reel machines.

Olá meu Nobre! Onde consigo comprar esse kit de correias? Algum site? Moro no Brasil... Obrigado

Nice work! In the 1980s I had several Sony quarter track tape recorders from the 1960s and they all worked great with not much work. I've never seen one with Auto-Reverse, though. I wonder how it works. I would have solved the power supply problem by replacing that wonky connector with a figure-8 or an IEC one. But whatever. Also are those playback/recording heads really badly worn? Or am I seeing it wrong? If so, that's a shame. Oh well. Thanks for posting!

I love your videos,but I find I have to raise my volume control considerably to hear you properly.

$20 bucks, you got a great deal indeed! I'm so happy it did not have any other deeper issues. It is always a gamble, but you won this one. Auto Reverse decks can be a PITA to tackle, but this deck was kind to you, other than the stuck VU... Not as difficult of a deck to work on as I assumed it would be, but it is still a complex circuit they designed on this though... Very informative and in depth restore of the mechanical operations. Great job my friend! Nice clean work you did and I'm glad the motor, meter amp and playback circuits were all still good. I'm also in the process of restoring a few decks myself. It is a labor of love indeed, but the reward is well worth it... Thank you👍

As open-reel tape recorders go, it's not a beast at all. it's actually quite diminutive.

hi i never seen this model in the uk ever i have 3 tc 755 decks i picked up at £20 each because parts were jammed up we all know why my first reel to reel deck was a model with a speaker in the front 4 track mono later i got a deck like this one later the first sony tc 755 i do have great deck new RS1700 OTARI MTR 12 finding great decks is very hard now use the bigger tape formats as price of 1/4 tape is silly now my otari mtr 12 is a jazzed deck 1/4 and 1/2 inch can change rollers and head blocks can take 1/8 inch in spool tape mode i used to do cassette dubbing mono for people in the past

You keep saying sarder surely it’s solder ?

You should use wd40 as a lubricant, use something like sewing machine oil

I assume those VU meters are purely for eye-candy/a rough indication, as they have no actual VU scale on them

Need a lot of patience.

Also some Sony's will have the VU meters work only on record. Also the meter ballistics were garbage anyway. I used an external meter if I were recording to the Sony, mostly would record on a much better machine then play on this Sony. Probably better.

So it could run by mobile power.

Name of final song?

Manufactured a lot just changed the name dear purchase at the time.

Philips 4307.

шарик под тонвал не поставили, косяк.

Ой гуцалык муцацалык гуцацюнька гуцаца !

Ok i get it. But surely someone out there has hacked a vhs to allow massive bandwidth (quality) using audio only. I used to record my music onto those for 6hour party mixes. Always thought it would be amazing to use all the available tape for ultra high quality audio or a cassette that could play for days without reaching the end. Kinda makes the reel thing a bit meh. Besides having reel to reel doesnt mean high quality with most of the players out there. Whole lot of crusty chemistry hidden away in those old devices.

i guess only 220v would be enough.

Lithium grease on the belts and pinch roller isn’t helping wow and flutter!

Big?? Get a 10,5 reel capable

Well done