Pioneer CT-F950 Rebuild - Those Pesky Pinch Rollers

 Got tied up yesterday with The Little Guy, as he unexpectedly stayed over Friday night, so this is a day late.

In fact, it's now TWO days late as I got sidetracked (what's new?) by some things on Saturday. If this was for a paying customer, it would have been out of here two weeks ago, but I've never worked on a cassette deck before. Which is why it's NOT for a paying customer. These things are a marvel of compact packaging of a complex mechanical assembly, all done to a "High End Prosumer" price level. It's one thing to make an extremely high-quality, rugged, reliable Reel-to-Reel tape recorder, and another thing entirely to do it for a Compact Cassette recorder. I can do all the basic service and repair on a good quality R2R deck as easily as the radio stuff I work on. Think Big-Block Chevy. Getting into one a cassette deck is more like getting in to a DOHC, Direct-Injected, Turbocharged, all aluminum, Indy Car engine. Whole different level of stuff needed. Smaller hardware and smaller components, all metric sized hardware, and different ways to measure things. Doable, but took some time to learn.

ANYWAY.....back to those Pinch Rollers. Yep, I screwed the pooch, f*cked the duck, and shot myself in the foot on this one. Well, gee, Jim........How'd That Happen? I got lazy, and didn't scrupulously clean all the old rubber from the bronze bearings they were vulcanized to.

See all the black stuff on the bearing? Yup....shoulda cleaned it ALL off before I pressed the new rubber sleeves on. I didn't, and I knew better because "They Didn't Look That Bad...".

Well, they were, but I used them anyway. Remember about all these parts being scaled down for a R2R machine? That means the defects on the little rollers "scaled up", and the molehills became mountains, and the audio quality suffered tremendously because of it. These rollers don't keep pressure on the tape; they drive the tape in conjunction with the two capstan shafts. And speed variance, or lumps and bumps in it's operation, directly affects how smoothly the tape goes past the heads. Wow and Flutter, those two dizty twins, made an appearance and wrecked the place. Evan Van Halen sounded horrible!

I tried several solvents to get the rubber loose, but no joy. All they did was clean it. I tried soaking them for 48hrs in a small container with SLW's "Skin-Safe! Non-Toxic!!" "paint stripper", and nada. They're soaking right now in some Aircraft-Grade Coating Remover that I use once in a while.

 

In the meantime....I bit the bullet and ordered a set from Athan, a company that specializes in any-and-all rollers, idlers, and tires for high-end equipment.

They're not only made of a better, longer-lasting Urethane compound, but they ditched the bronze Oilite bearing for a ball-bearing.

The rubber sleeves were about $25 for a pair. The Athan rollers are $50.....each. Plus tax and shipping.

Oh, well, these should last "forever"....

And here they are, living in their Forever Home...

 

With the front panel on:

 And just about ready to begin the Electrical tests as per the Service Manual.

Y'all be safe out there in the coming week!