Sony Canada and its sales representatives tell me they cannot repair my Sony
WM-2091 Walkman because the motor drive is no longer available. I solicit
the opinion of the experts on the validity of this statement and whether
there are any other repair agents who can assist me.

The WM-2091 was Sony’s absolutely “top-of-the-line” cassette Walkman when I
purchased it about ten years ago. It has no tuner, but produces excellent
sound and thundering bass from a package that fits in a shirt pocket and is
driven by a single, double AA cell. I paid a premium price for it, based
significantly on expecting Sony to support it. Also key was the quality of
the sound, which is as good as a CD player when I use my metal tape
cassettes.

The unit was used for about 500 to 800 hours, during long flights to / from
Europe and Asia, was treated very carefully and has gone nowhere for about 6
or 7 years. When I finally took it on another business trip last month, the
motor did not turn, suggesting (to me) that the belt had gone – not
unexpected after ten years.

The Sony dealer told me that both the belt and motor required replacement
(the latter surprised me because of no previous problems, the low usage and
the tender care that this unit has always received). “Perhaps they are just
running up the service bill on me”, I thought.

About a week later, they called to tell me that the motor for this unit was
no longer available and they therefore could not fix it. I am out my $40.00
for the troubleshooting activity. There are no apologies from Sony for the
lack of support for a unit that, in my opinion, is not that old, was
purchased with higher expectations of a well-known brand name and that is a
“top-of-the-line” product.

My main concern now is to identify a potential source of repair for this
unit, as I have a substantial investment in metal cassette tapes and would
prefer to use a repaired WM-2091 rather than be forced to go to an MP3
player (it won’t be a Sony).

Any comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Bill

"Bill Evans" wrote in message
...
Sony Canada and its sales representatives tell me they cannot repair my
Sony
WM-2091 Walkman because the motor drive is no longer available. I solicit
the opinion of the experts on the validity of this statement and whether
there are any other repair agents who can assist me.
snip
The Sony dealer told me that both the belt and motor required replacement
(the latter surprised me because of no previous problems, the low usage
and
the tender care that this unit has always received). "Perhaps they are
just
running up the service bill on me", I thought.

snip
My main concern now is to identify a potential source of repair for this
unit, as I have a substantial investment in metal cassette tapes and would
prefer to use a repaired WM-2091 rather than be forced to go to an MP3
player (it won't be a Sony).
Any comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Bill

Search eBay for a similar unit, and use that or salvage the motor from it ?
And... ...I paid a premium price for my EOS3 shortly before digital SLRs
became mainstream. It's called progress !

--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm

Bill Evans wrote:
Sony Canada and its sales representatives tell me they cannot repair my Sony
WM-2091 Walkman because the motor drive is no longer available. I solicit
the opinion of the experts on the validity of this statement and whether
there are any other repair agents who can assist me.

The WM-2091 was Sony’s absolutely “top-of-the-line” cassette Walkman when I
purchased it about ten years ago. It has no tuner, but produces excellent
sound and thundering bass from a package that fits in a shirt pocket and is
driven by a single, double AA cell. I paid a premium price for it, based
significantly on expecting Sony to support it. Also key was the quality of
the sound, which is as good as a CD player when I use my metal tape
cassettes.

The unit was used for about 500 to 800 hours, during long flights to / from
Europe and Asia, was treated very carefully and has gone nowhere for about 6
or 7 years. When I finally took it on another business trip last month, the
motor did not turn, suggesting (to me) that the belt had gone – not
unexpected after ten years.

The Sony dealer told me that both the belt and motor required replacement
(the latter surprised me because of no previous problems, the low usage and
the tender care that this unit has always received). “Perhaps they are just
running up the service bill on me”, I thought.

About a week later, they called to tell me that the motor for this unit was
no longer available and they therefore could not fix it. I am out my $40.00
for the troubleshooting activity. There are no apologies from Sony for the
lack of support for a unit that, in my opinion, is not that old, was
purchased with higher expectations of a well-known brand name and that is a
“top-of-the-line” product.

My main concern now is to identify a potential source of repair for this
unit, as I have a substantial investment in metal cassette tapes and would
prefer to use a repaired WM-2091 rather than be forced to go to an MP3
player (it won’t be a Sony).

Any comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Bill


I know you said you would not like to, but maybe it's time to change up
to the MP3 player. Of course this means taking some time to digitize and
mp3 your cassettes, but it looks like you have a large investment of
personally recorded high quality tapes, so you like recording. You know,
setting the right bias, checking azimuth, getting the levels right for
Dolby or what have you. Making a high quality MP3 of your cassettes is
the same kind of process through a different means, and the benefits
will be stupendous. Depending on what rate you MP3 your audio
collection, you can store hundreds of hours of music on the MP3 player.
I'd say, given that you use metal tapes I suggest a fixed bit
rate of 192 kbps at the very minimumm for your MP3 file. You could make
several hundred hours worth of MP3s to load onto your new player.

Here's an example:

A 200 MB 192kbps mp3 file holds about 2.5 hours of music. If you were to
buy a 20GB MP3 player, it would be able to store 250 hours worth of
those MP3s. In other words, that's the equivalent of one
-hundred-and-sixty-six TDK MA-X or Maxell MX-S C90 tapes right there on
the player. You'll never have to worry about all those cassettes again.
There are even 40 and 60 GB players. Just imagine having your entire
audio collection in a reasonably high quality audio format (equivalent
to a metal cassette), right at your fingertips.

Now, of course you would keep a duplicate of this collection of MP3s on
your computer or archived to CD or DVD because if you do drop your MP3
player, since it is a hard drive, one nasty fall can render the whole
system useless. All MP3s gone. Cassettes were a little more robust in
that fashion

Hope this helps

CD

You should not be surprised. None of the manufactures supply parts for units
older than about 5 years. For some of the newer products, the life cycle is
now 3 years.

Very few people service these tape players. Sony supported them by changing
the complete boards, or complete unit during the warranty period. Panasonic,
Fisher, Pioneer, and all these manufactures follow the same policy.

The Sony units are still up there in the top quality for performance.

You should be looking for a digital MP3 player. These can store a large
amount of music, depending on the amount of memory you buy for it. The
system for tapes is going obsolete, and there are very few tape type units
being made. Soon there will be none made.

As for all of the new players, there is very little service that is able to
be done to it once it breaks down. There is just one main circuit board,
maybe a daughter board, a switch panel, the card socket, the battery holder,
a display module, and the main case. These parts are not designed to be
serviceable. The units are serviced by changing a complete module or board.
After the units are about 3 to 4 years old, there are no more parts
(modules) once the manufacture runs out. For the ones that are below a
certain price, there is no after warranty service available.

--

Jerry G.
=====

"Bill Evans" wrote in message
...
Sony Canada and its sales representatives tell me they cannot repair my Sony
WM-2091 Walkman because the motor drive is no longer available. I solicit
the opinion of the experts on the validity of this statement and whether
there are any other repair agents who can assist me.

The WM-2091 was Sony's absolutely "top-of-the-line" cassette Walkman when I
purchased it about ten years ago. It has no tuner, but produces excellent
sound and thundering bass from a package that fits in a shirt pocket and is
driven by a single, double AA cell. I paid a premium price for it, based
significantly on expecting Sony to support it. Also key was the quality of
the sound, which is as good as a CD player when I use my metal tape
cassettes.

The unit was used for about 500 to 800 hours, during long flights to / from
Europe and Asia, was treated very carefully and has gone nowhere for about 6
or 7 years. When I finally took it on another business trip last month, the
motor did not turn, suggesting (to me) that the belt had gone - not
unexpected after ten years.

The Sony dealer told me that both the belt and motor required replacement
(the latter surprised me because of no previous problems, the low usage and
the tender care that this unit has always received). "Perhaps they are just
running up the service bill on me", I thought.

About a week later, they called to tell me that the motor for this unit was
no longer available and they therefore could not fix it. I am out my $40.00
for the troubleshooting activity. There are no apologies from Sony for the
lack of support for a unit that, in my opinion, is not that old, was
purchased with higher expectations of a well-known brand name and that is a
"top-of-the-line" product.

My main concern now is to identify a potential source of repair for this
unit, as I have a substantial investment in metal cassette tapes and would
prefer to use a repaired WM-2091 rather than be forced to go to an MP3
player (it won't be a Sony).

Any comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Bill

Bill Evans wrote:
Sony Canada and its sales representatives tell me they cannot repair my Sony
WM-2091 Walkman because the motor drive is no longer available. I solicit
the opinion of the experts on the validity of this statement and whether
there are any other repair agents who can assist me.

The WM-2091 was Sony’s absolutely “top-of-the-line” cassette Walkman when I
purchased it about ten years ago. It has no tuner, but produces excellent
sound and thundering bass from a package that fits in a shirt pocket and is
driven by a single, double AA cell. I paid a premium price for it, based
significantly on expecting Sony to support it. Also key was the quality of
the sound, which is as good as a CD player when I use my metal tape
cassettes.

The unit was used for about 500 to 800 hours, during long flights to / from
Europe and Asia, was treated very carefully and has gone nowhere for about 6
or 7 years. When I finally took it on another business trip last month, the
motor did not turn, suggesting (to me) that the belt had gone – not
unexpected after ten years.

The Sony dealer told me that both the belt and motor required replacement
(the latter surprised me because of no previous problems, the low usage and
the tender care that this unit has always received). “Perhaps they are just
running up the service bill on me”, I thought.

About a week later, they called to tell me that the motor for this unit was
no longer available and they therefore could not fix it. I am out my $40.00
for the troubleshooting activity. There are no apologies from Sony for the
lack of support for a unit that, in my opinion, is not that old, was
purchased with higher expectations of a well-known brand name and that is a
“top-of-the-line” product.

My main concern now is to identify a potential source of repair for this
unit, as I have a substantial investment in metal cassette tapes and would
prefer to use a repaired WM-2091 rather than be forced to go to an MP3
player (it won’t be a Sony).

Any comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Bill


Your post, and my need imminent need for a personal voice recorder,
really got me thinking much more about purchasing a portable player. I
found that some of these portable units have the voice recorder built
in. For me, and I guess like you, portability and sound quality were of
utmost importance. I've borrowed friends Ipods and Irivers products, and
I also own an Iriver product, but it's a not so portable CD player that
plays MP3s. It sounds wonderful playing MP3s. I checked out what Iriver
has to offer and read some reviews on the IFP-190T and the IFP-390T. I
decided on the 390T but couldn't find it in a lot of places at a
competitive prices. So, I decided on this;

http://iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/700/ifp_790.aspx

It's right down the family line of the well reveived Iriver IFP-*90T
series. It looks like the perfect blend of portability, quality MP3
playback, and a voice recorder all in one. It even has an FM radio built
in which I do not really care for, as well as a few other features.

I'm probably going to have to replace the iriver headphones with some
better units. The IFP-190T came with some well reputed Sennhieser's.
They're earbuds which I'm not much a fan of. I need headphone that are
enclosed, sensitive, and capable of producing deep, deep bass. If anyone
can suggest some good heaphones with those qualities, I'm all ears,
excuse the pun

Other than that, I can't wait to receive my new MP3 player!

CD