Old tape player

[Hi Ho]

I have a lot of old cassette tapes that I want to digitize. I have an old Panasonic radio that has a very good quality tape deck in it. However, it no longer plays tapes. It records beautifully but why I try to play a tape I get an extremely loud buzzing sound (60hz hum) from both the speakers and the line-out jack. I have cleaned it out, demagnetized the heads, and taken the whole thing apart/reassembled and it still doesn't work. Any ideas?

[Unwept_Tyr]

Try one of these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/mp3/6908/

[trulad]

I have the PlusDeck 2 and it does a good job of converting your cassette tapes to mp3 to burn to a CD or just to store on your hard drive. As the review said, the user's manual is laughable because of the poor english.but you can easily configure it. Also, I sometimes just pop in a tape to play. Sounds much better over my computer's speakers.
trulad

[Hi Ho]

I already have a good tape deck. I just need it to work. If there's any way I could get the one I have working it would be nice. I don't want to spend a lot of money on this.

[SonicVanguard]

Sounds like the playback head is either damaged or very demagnitized. As we recently found in the studio, getting replacement parts for tape decks is becoming difficult and expensive. It was cheaper for us to replace a bad deck than to fix it - I wouldn't have been able to say that two or three years ago.

[David M]

If your sending the audio signal from one amp to another amp the 60Hz humm may be from a ground loop. Radio Shack has ground loop isolators.

[Hi Ho]

No, the 60hz hum comes from the speakers in the radio itself as well as through the line-out. It used to work sometimes after whacking it a few times. Last night I had it working for a couple minutes then it went back to buzzing. I don't think it's a bad head.

[juppy]

In most of my experiences with electronic equipment, it seems that if you can whack something and make it work that alot of the time you've got a cracked/cold solder joint inside. That can also cause a loud humming too especially if it's on something like a pre-amp transistor that boosts the power.

Have you tried leaving it on for awhile when it does the buzzing? If it's a bad solder joint, alot of times it will make connection after being on for awhile because the cracked joint warms up and expands and starts making better contact.

[Hi Ho]

A cracked solder joint has been my suspicion. I have already repaired a couple on the line out/in jacks but I don't know where to look for another one. I'll try leaving it on for a while and see if it makes any difference. I guess I could take a magnifying glass and start inspecting all of the joints. The problem is that most aren't accessible and I can't figure out how to disassemble it any further (no more screws but won't come apart).

[cuog]

I have a similar problem with my old stereo amp when i rn my guitar through it it gets so hot that some of the solder joints have been slowly loosing solder so i think it is about time i opened it added some cooling and checked the joints but you may consier looking at all of the dodadamajiggs in there and see if any are loose and you may need to replace them but as far as lack of screws to open it you may want to see if there are plastic pieces that are holding them together so that also may be an idea for something for you to check as well