Yamaha KX-200 cassette deck repairs 

Regarding the 3D printing issue, I am happy to see some people in their comments have made some good points I did not previously know about, such as alternative 3D printing techniques specially designed for high resolution prints. This is a very useful discussion. So I will correct myself and say, 3D printing a replacement gear is *not impossible* . However, two points remain: How to create a sufficiently accurate 3D model of the original gear, and most importantly: Is the cassette deck really worth all the effort (time and money) of creating a 3D printed replacement gear?

I actually work in 3D printing -- it's very much true that an FDM (plastic extrusion) printer would not be capable of printing something that small, but a DLP (photocuring resin) printer absolutely could! Potentially not worth the effort, but it might be worth looking into if something similar happens on a nicer deck. At any rate, thanks for the video, I enjoy these!

Print a new round cog (with no teeth) the outer diameter of the old one. Use a PCB or needle drill to bore the centre hole, then using the old cog hot melt glue it to the new one. Cut the teeth using a shaped jewellery file. Separate the 2 cogs with IPA. Really is easy I've made several replacements for cassette tape decks an VCR's. Whole process takes about 30 to 60 minutes.

I do cast epoxy spare gears. If you can make a model into a mold from an old wheel, you don't need a 3D printer. If the wheel is broken and lost, nothing can be done unless you borrow the same mechanism. Last week I had a problem with the Philips FC930 deck, but out of the two mechanisms I choose the best wheels, made the mold and casts. Deck mechanisms work fine.

I have fixed several of these Yamaha cassette decks and figured the door problem as a partial engage as soon as you started. What didn’t happen is on most of these, if the counter belt isn’t present, the chip shuts down the drive to prevent spilling tape. There is usually an optical sensor on the counter to check on tape advance - but I see this KX-200 does not have that. Learn something new every day! Thanks!

i woke up this morning a bit earlier than necessary to go to the airport. this was to give me some extra moments to make sure my bag is packed. it was NOT to watch dr cassette videos. but alas, this is what i have done. that is very sad about the tiny gear which will eventually cause the deck to perish. but, so shall i, and us all. excellent video! thank you!

My brother Dr cassette you seems to be a very good teacher because you talk slowly and your English is good for everyone to understand, thank u so much, I'm listening u from Kenya.

I've been subscribed to this channel at least from 5 years, and its clearly noticeable how your skills improved a lot over the time. I'm happy about this new cassette decks repair series. Thanks for the great contents, greetings from Italy!

Excellent! just what I needed before approaching my K-340 (looks almost the same, same mech but different PCB inside). It's amazing that it was my main deck back in the 80s and 90s and ... I could not be happier then! Today, I got a Revox and a Nak but this Yamaha is still in decent shape despite very high mileage and teenage abuse. Overall, seems like a very robust mech.

great video and good to see you back at fixing Cassette decks again, looking forward to seeing the German ones you showed off in a previous video.

you have a wonderfully steady presentation voice. Really enjoy that you stick on task and not get sidetracked. Enjoy your videos- thanks a lot

Great video! I used to have a KX-7, I like the soft touch buttons a lot. Yes, I remember install the main belt is a pain. Thanks for solving the mystery of the "ticking" sound which happened to my technics deck before, I never figure out why and now I know. Thanks.

Thank you! I'm a cassette deck noob. I was going mad when I couldn't get my belt in place, glad you showed me how to do it

These videos are soooo addictive. I have watched quite a few this evening already and want to watch more!

Great result; for me, usually something worthwhile to learn in a DrCassette video, thanks. Looking forward to the next cassette repair videos :)

Very informative and professionally executed as far as simplicity of instructions is concerned, I have this particular deck and thanks to this video I’m well educated on the mechanics of the unit. Thanks for the information 🥂

That was really informative. I hope to try my hand at repairing old tape decks soon and this video was invaluable. Great job!

A great fix. I like Yamaha tape decks. I have a KX500 and 530.

I gave myself an electric shock today whilst having the stereo system open and fiddling around the cassette area. My left arm accidentally touched the mains points inside the system whilst i had the power on to test the tape mechanism. It didn't cause serious problems but made me shout a bit. I got a good telling off from the wife.

I have that same deck! Picked it up cheap at a thrift store and it worked perfectly. I did loose the counter belt later on and just removed it. I use it with a component stack on my desk at work with some home made speakers. :-)

Some years back I picked up a Yamaha KX-260 deck. My first deck (then) with Dolby HX-Pro. It also has Dolby-B/C, Bias Adjust and a really sweet feature; Play Trim. Like your deck, the 260's meters suck with only five or six LED's per channel. Still though, for the price it is a reliable deck. I use it as playback only and have no complaints. Interesting video.

I like your analitical approach

first class work my friend. well done.

Great to see inside this. I've been wanting to get myself a cheap deck and see if I can fix it. Some of the SONY portable recorders are going for a fortune. I never have any luck picking up a cheap one to fix myself

Hi Dr. I will look out for a KX-200 gear(no cost, I'm just enthusiastic to see your KX-200 Working) since everyone dumps all their old stuff now(Covid 19, people clearing houses etc). I'm sometimes lucky getting Yamaha, Nakamichi, National-Panasonic, Sony, Technics-Panasonic, Telefunken, Blaupunkt etc. Well known makes only. I don't repair the latest sh!t. I like your video. If i owned a KX-200, i would definitely use your video to repair it. I won't say what Hi-Fi's and TV's ive got. PS: currently working on a very rare Baby Monster called a Nakamitchi 1000ZXL(You would know). Over 2900 models of almost everything i repaired( i stopped counting), but i only serviced repaired tuned two( Three just now got my third one). They are very rare Fully Computerized. Both Hitachi oscilloscopes are working to repair it and one military scope analyzing, not to mention the Fluke's, Uni-t's and HP test equipment and one Wandel and Goltermann time lapse analyzer used in the 1990's PCM ST and Plessey Telecommunication Systems. Thank you for your video, was very inspirational... Re

You can go on eBay now and buy a bag of assorted plastic gears made for justice problem so you can buy these gears go on eBay you'll find them they are out there I've done it myself I repair these devices all the time and you just go right there on eBay and it's a bag of assorted gears and you can also find them in wish as well as geek and you can also find a sorted replacement belts on those two app site so so it's not that hard to find the gears down I'm not sure what your name is but that was old units with the gears can be brought back to life because the gears are now being made

Well done as always Sir. Own a KX-300U which I bought brand new back in the day. As i need to lubricate that motor as it runs slow, which I thought was the belt.

Not a bad deck... falls directly in line with the year of my birth, so it would've been a pleasure to own one of those!

Nice video. I love how adamant you were about 3D printing not working. But it was sad to see that the gear for the supply mechanism was disintegrating. I see the discoloring of the gears which I think I can assume is from oil. Someone thought to lube it which is a no no. It should have stayed dry or if they were to lube it, use some sort of silicone base. The white lithium could work to. The properties in oil will deteriorate the plastic like you show. I have a Yamaha KX630 which is a bit more complicated to work on. I'll have a video of that and the work I did on the tape transport in the near future but it will be on my other YT channel.

Nice deck! I used to have a silver 1989 KX130 which was very similar.

Superb. Excellent explanations, good photography, good editing. So much better than overweight American RU-vidrs drawling on for an hour...

explanation at another level!

i envy people who can fix things especially electronics Cheers!

Too bad that's not the KX-300. The 300 is one of the best-sounding budget decks ever manufactured.

You are right, I have a Philips 70FC565 and the gear was broken. More, I put and save it in a small box, but it change in powder. I don't know why this happens. If you know where the have spareparts, it will be great. Thanks. 🙂

Great video, so many tiny pieces

Loving the 3D print rant! 🤣

what you can do is keep the tape deck for parts and when you come across another deck with compatible part you can swap the part. yamaha is a very good name and the quality is very good by todays standards compared to todays tape decks.

Just worked on a KX-230 with a similar (if not identical) mechanism. Takeup motor badly needed lubricating. Was almost deafening in operation when I picked it up. Wasn't fun having to yank that soft gear off the motor.

I'm a fan of Yamaha cassette decks. I have two KX-580s one of which works perfectly having been fully re-capped, re-lubed and refurbished as well as being fitted with new belts, but the second has the play heads stuck in the UP position, I've yet to get round to fixing it. The KX-580 wasn't as high end as my Sony TC-K611S but sounds slightly better in my humble opinion.

A success story! Regarding those gears that may break over time, there have been similar cases for some Nakamichi decks. Some of these gears are not 'solid' in construction - makes me wonder why Nakamichi did this? Even my cheaper Sony decks have longer lasting gear wheels.

Nice job, as always ...

I had a Yamaha better grade two-head model that escapes me. I'm pretty sure it must have been the little soft gear you mention that killed it. In my case I was not savvy enough to see any reason inside why it wasn't working but now I feel you've explained. it. I always feel really let down when they build an otherwise really solid kit around a cheap little part that will make the rest of the company's effort to make a good deck fail A good rule of thumb is make any moving part to a high degree of reliability and take into account heavy use, temperature and humidity variations beyond average tolerances, and general abuse of things like sticky tapes and all. If the moving parts are built to last in these instances all the circuitry past this should be repairable without heroics. It's those failing one of a kind and impossible to access moving parts that spell end of life.

On Ebay I saw a seller who does those tiny gearplates by hand. You can buy (relatively cheap) very much every gear for the Philips Decks. I don't know if he also makes gearplates for the Yamahas, Technics and Denons, but it would be worth a look.

I think this is one of them decks that leave the capstan running 24/7 if powered, so they can often wear out very quickly from people leaving them on!

I had almost the same Alps mechanism in my 1989 Pioneer CT-333 deck :)

Thanks for rewiews and nice speaking

I have a Yamaha K 540 . It has a third motor that controls all the functions, a sort of cam motor , but at some point it broke down.. I just had fixed some alignment problems because recordings weren't well balanced . I found that the spacer on the capstan wasn't in its right place and because of that the capstan moved back and forth when hitting record and so the tape was pulled slightly incorrectly over the heads from the start . After I fixed it , it was very stable and recordings sounded absolutely perfect . Unfortunately when I turn the power on now , it makes some rattling noise and that's it.. 😞 .

Hard to imagine that small parts like that cannot be printed nowadays, probably not yet on consumer available tech, but industrial machines are more than likely capable of doing tiny dimensions such as those cogwheels.

At least the gears in the early/mid 80s Grundig tape decks can be 3D printed. They suck and make lots of noise (and you do have to file the print head snot off between the teeth), but at least you have a working tape deck again. (getting the take-up/supply gear to work with a 3D printed gear really is a gamble. You're better off replacing the motor with one that has a groove for a belt, then cut a groove in the take-up reel, put a belt around these and remember to never, ever hit that rewind button again - that's how I fixed mine. The 3D printed gear for the head assembly/record functionality lasted over a year on moderate use)

The capstan belt probably has been replaced by the previous owner. There is no way a 1984 belt to survive for so long.

There is a guy in eBay...called silicon mind and makes gears for cassette decks...not 3D printed but moulded i think... I've bought for some philips decks gears from him and they are very good

excellent video

Good job! I subscribed.

Hi Dr., Great videos, very informative. What kind of white lithium grease do you use? Any special one? Thx.

I have had the same issue with a single speaker Philips portable Radio/cassette player from the mid 80s (Malaysian made). It had 3 gears made of that plastic; the plastic becomes really soft. I've removed the gears completely as bits were spreading all over the insides. It will never play a cassette again, but the AM & FM tuner is excellent (perfect with batteries to take in the garden). It was disappointing not to fix as it had long been in my grandparents house & when visiting I regularly used the radio. After they died I brought it home & wanted to restore it, but it is no to be.

you make it look an easy fix good its going

Mine works, sometimes the door doesn't close but it will once i put enough force into it. Also the rewinding/fast-forward is kinda loud. Wonder what it is. Lubrication?

I have a yamaha k220 but the tape ounter is not working, havenf opened it up yet but guessing belt issue, hoping its similar to ghe k200 as cant find any guides for the k220 online and not swapped a belt before but have some ordered

Very nice deck

That soft gear is like the blue take-up gear in many Sony VHS VCRs. With age they eventually crack and split, rendering the take-up reel non-functional.

Thank you for a very informative presentation, please could you say where the counter belt is attached inside the mechanism, Thank you.

Very Good , Thanks

Delighted to find this video, since I have a nearly-identical unit (KX-200U) with a similar set of problems. But I have questions - what brand of “silicon oil” did you use, and where on the motor did you apply it? Also - where does one obtain white lithium grease, such as you applied to the capstan bearings? Please keep in mind many of us viewers don’t have a fully-equipped repair shop at our disposal.

I have a 1984 Yamaha K520. I got it for $5 at a pawnshop a couple years ago. I looked it up on Ebay and it was around $125. I barely used it but everything works on it although it has bad Wow but the Flutter sounds ok. It's in my grandma's room and I can't wait to give it some good maintenance. *hopefully it doesn't use the same mech with that bad gear this one uses :(

I wonder if taking out the little gear and giving it a coating of resin or something else that could protect it from the lubricants? So long as it doesn't make it too thick to work properly? It would have to be applied only to the face's though... It might keep it running for longer.... It's just an idea...

Hi doctor, where did you get the replacement belt for the counter? Or can I just get any belt that fits? I have a kx-200u

You CAN print the gear with a resin printer since they have a much higher resolution as a filament printer. And those printers are pretty affordable now.

I have a NAK DR 2, the problem is that i 20:13 t stops playing cassettes.If I put the deck on pause modethe head assembly comes down after some time .I have replaced the main frive belt very recently.Coujd you guide in this matter.Thanks.

I was just thinking, for somebody with enough time and or a CNC delicate machine technically should be able to manufacture that wheel from a harder plastic like ebonite as is hard enough to be delicately machined. I made a component for golf door like by file. Of course, for those little teeth you need a machine. The downsize would be a noisier mechanism and in time most probably will wear the bigger nylon wheel. I believe those wheels are made from nylon because it is soft enough and it does not need lubrication. Yet again, everything described is not economically to be done.

3D with a budget printer NO in this case. But with a professional 3D printer no problem at all. I printed smaller gears without issues. With FreeCAD for example it has a build in tool for creating gears. Takes les than an hour to draw such a gear.

Best thing you could do with the gear is maybe find one that is in decent shape and cast it in silicone face down. Even then you'd have to leave some extra material on the back to plane down or something. The down sides of plastics.

My Yamaha after the belts replacing indicates on the display - "test", that blinks. Play, rewind and ff does not work.What can it be?

Looks like a basic Alps mechanism. The wear on the coupling gear was also present in some Nakamichi decks with Sankyo drives. There is pro and con to idler tyres and this plastic gear is one of its pros.

1:10 It may be a middle of the line cassette deck overall but it was Yamaha's entry-level deck back in '87. For some reason that I do not know, there was never a KX-100.

Doc, this kind of off the subject but what would cause intermittent break up of the sound from either channel on an amplifier?

It's a shame to see what's inside. Emptiness! :)

Hey so a cassette deck that doesn't record even if the vu meters are moving. Just need dexoit on a certain area or can it be more serious then that like a solder issue? Have a pioneer ctf755. It won't record and it has a sticker on it saying "refurbished"

I wonder how replaceable those motors are if you had to. I reckon it wouldn’t be easy to source the exact right motor. My boss has a 3D printer and yes, the resolution is pretty coarse, it definitely wouldn’t be suitable to print such a fine detail part. Having a 3D printer is one thing, but he can’t use a cad package so guess who had to design a test object... Me. It was quite finnicky as I used a building modelling cad package (Revit) which is totally unsuitable to design small 150x150mm footprint items.

It's good but I love my Onkyo ta-rw404

Might not be possible to print on a filament printer but looks possible on a resin printer. They can print M2,5 nuts and bolts (yes, including threads) with that.

I have a Yamaha KC-320. Plays, rewinds and forwards ok but doesn't record. Would that be a belt issue or something more complicated?

you can get that gear from aliexpress or make your own with metal using lathe

I'm not telling you to 3D print I'm telling you that you can buy those little tiny gears and bags assorted gears for cassette decks and for other types of units that use gears like CD changers there's a lot of them the Sony walkmans the Sony Discman some of them that you was gears to open and close the doors to open and close the the units themselves they use gears instead of belts and note the people were throwing them out because they couldn't get the gears and some company I can't remember the name of the company off hand I would have to dig through my Supply to find an unopened package cuz I have a whole bunch of Gears laying in a box right now I don't have the package I think I have one package laying and I have to look through my file Define the company name I haven't had to do it for a while but there's a company out there that you can go through eBay that sells packages of assorted little plastic gears that you don't have to throw these units out anymore that run on Gears instead of belts and torque What do you call its torque units I hated throwing them out to so I used to get the real cheap units I used to buy them up by the 10th and 15th when I go to flea markets and I used to rip the gears out of them the fix the expensive ones and then finally somebody told me about this on eBay and I said he was basically almost told me he was he was a liar and then I looked it up and I actually found it and I ordered a whole bunch of them and I was able to find the right gears that I needed

Hola. I have an onkyo deck, Ta-rw414. Some buttons do not respond, what could it be?

Hey Dr cassette, when will you do the telefunken 450? I just bought one from Germany and I'm in the states, I bought one with a 220v 50hz, sticker and I may be screwed, temporary I bought some crappy wall Mart 220v to 110 adapter it works but it plays slow, so I have a transformer on the way to see if an actual conversion will work, upon further discovery, I noticed that If I switch to dolby expander, I lose the left cbannel, switch it to off and the left channel crackles and then works, I'll see when the transformer comes but I do not know if this is a problem from not getting the supplied power or of this was an issue beforehand

awww dude i got ya covered... you just need to print a 3D printer that is small enough with the right resolution to 3D print that part you need! PROBLEM SOLVED!

👌

I have this exact tape deck and pulled it from the garage as it sat there for 20 plus years. When I tried to operate it, when I press play, the mechanism spins for a few seconds but then stops. The tape head does not pop up to play. I don't hear the clicking sound. Fast forward and rewind works perfectly. Any idea what's wrong that's preventing the tape head from popping up?

Do you see spring in door mecanism was missing?? Spring place is under that spring, that was in video. That spring is point 5:26 top on screen. Its function, is lock that hook to door. Without that spring door don't lock all the time.

I have a Yamaha KX-230 Cassette Deck, and sometimes when I press "Play", it starts rewinding. It can be really annoying, especially when I'm trying to record something. What could cause this to happen?

Do you know how to switch from Normal/Chrome/Metal tape type on these decks ?

I have a Yamaha RX-300 amplifier it looks similar to that cassette deck

If someone is able to 3d print something like that to you, why not contact them personally and ask them to send it to you :). There might be some magic men in the world

Can it be connected to the laptop?

Yamaha saved check!!!! Nice!!! jaja

You can 3d print that part

clean the belt with windows cleaner? why not with Isopropyl alcohol?

Wegen dem Laufwerk, ist das nicht ein ALPS (glaube, so heißt es??) -Laufwerk? Hat ja auch einen braunen Löschkopf und die waren auch öfters in unterschiedlichen Geräten verbaut. Kann mich aber auch irren, weil ich bis jetzt noch von keinen kaputten Zahnrädern bei ALPS gehört habe. Kann aber auch sein, dass es ein frühes ALPS-LW ist oder auch garkeines. Und das mit Plastik in den Laufwerken finde ich generell so eine Sache. Manchmal gibt es aber tatsächlich 3D-gedruckte Nachbauten von z.B. Zahnrädern, wie die von den Walkman DDs. Aber die werden dann wohl auch einfacher zu drucken sein, bzw. größere Zähne haben.

but you really can 3d print one with resin. not filament. the only thing is not really a improvement over the old plastic .