Washing a Pioneer CT-979

Submitted on: 16 Jan 15

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Category: My workshop

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I had two of them, but washed only one 🙂

So, Pioneer CT-979 looks like this from an outside:

And this is how it looks from the inside.

I don’t like to take any cassette deck from a smoker but this one was from such an environment.

But the one I had to wash: the dirt (dust + nicotine) made my choice.

So I disassembled it and put it into the bath. Observe the gray-brown chassis and main printed circuit board.

The first round: hot water.

Then I used degreaser. Just take a look what is going out of this deck… and it is not the first time I did this, I saw it on some other decks, amps etc. too.

After all, I used demineralized water to splash the tap water remains.

But before this, just take a look at the brown nicotine solution at the top of the chassis, just up to the PCB.

What do you think, how do lungs of the smoker look like?

I also disassembled the front board of the deck. But I didn’t wash the PCB, just almost everything else.

Now, my CT-979 is resting on the newspaper to get dry.

Now it should be assembled.

And it looks much cleaner, isn’t it?

Just look at these beautiful copper foils over main power capacitors!

And the mainboard looks like new!

There is a Reference Master Mechanism – not the best of all, but very good indeed.

Large flywheels, three motor, pretty elaborated but no casted alloy chassis.

And one more photo of it:

After washing and servicing the mechanism (didn’t take the pictures), I connected the deck to the computer and adjusted it to my reference tape, checked frequency response, wow & flutter etc.

At the end, CT-979 is ready to sing 🙂

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