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Dear followers, this is the jubilee two-hundredth article I am publishing on my blog… so I hope you will enjoy it as well. I started writing it in the middle of the night, on my birthday…

I have already published a review of the Philips FC920, so I will not dwell on the history of the 900 series that Philips introduced to the market in the early 1990s.

The top model among the decks was the now quite rare FC950, with a catalogue price of 600 DEM (300 EUR), which placed it roughly in the lower midrange category of cassette decks.

General overview

Essentially, this is a three-head deck with a design that was modern for its time, even somewhat extravagant, featuring a slanted base that holds the basic transport controls at an angle and a prominently centered mechanism. In addition, there are two vertical columns of buttons on both sides of the cassette door.

In essence, the design is the same as that of its more modest sibling, the FC920, but with significantly more major and minor features, which I will describe in the following lines.

Let me start the description gradually.

The front panel of the Philips FC950 is metal, rather than fully plastic as on its younger brother. There are more potentiometers, and they provide a very pleasant tactile feel when rotated — including the one for variable bias adjustment.

The display is, this time, very good: a dual-color display with peak hold and 12 segments per channel, with solid resolution around 0 dB. The counter is digital, pseudo-real-time and numerical, and its display segments are dot-based — not a true dot-matrix display, but configured to show certain deck functions.

It is a nice touch that the display also shows the cassette type (normal, chrome, metal) currently loaded in the deck, something that unfortunately does not exist on the FC920.

In addition to Blank Skip track search, there is also a counter memory function (which stores the current counter value and stops the transport during winding), as well as a Scan function that plays tracks briefly until you recognize the one you want to hear. There is also a Rec Cancel option for aborting recording, which is very well implemented — perhaps the best of all the decks I have had the opportunity to own.

I particularly liked the fact that multi-track search is possible, where the display shows n-02 if, for example, you want to skip forward two tracks (n – next), or p-02 for going backward (p – previous). This is an improvement over the FC920.

The Philips FC-950 is equipped with HX Pro, as were almost all decks of that era.

Inside

It is astonishing how similar the FC950 looks internally to the FC920 — you really have to look closely to spot the differences. The most obvious ones are the number of flywheels and the absence of a door-opening motor in the FC920, although the motor mounting bracket is still present.

The main PCB is of similar dimensions, and the layout of the electronic sections is very similar in both decks: the microcontroller is in the same place, the power supply section as well (with most components identical), the recording section with bias adjustments for normal, chrome and metal tapes has trim pots in the same positions, and so on.

Of course, this is a three-head deck and therefore includes audio elements that the auto-reverse two-head FC920 does not have — dual Dolby circuits for recording and playback, for example.

The component layout and minimal internal wiring deserve praise — everything is neat, simple and orderly.

Excellent newer Sony CXA1331S Dolby ICs are used.

Adjustments are the same as on the younger sibling: trim pots are present for peak meters, playback and recording level, while bias is adjusted separately for normal tape (left and right channels independently) and jointly for chrome and metal tapes — as seen, for example, on Akai GX75/95 decks.

The transport is also somewhat different, mainly because it is not auto-reverse. Unfortunately, just like on the FC920, a rather poor mechanism is used here, with a modest flywheel, a single motor, an idler tire and a belt. Was it really so expensive to use a two-motor version and reduce the strain on the single motor, especially when they already opted for a modest flywheel? Truly shameful — for the price it commanded, it should have been better.

I came across a website claiming that the FC950 features direct drive, plus two additional motors for the mechanism and one for door operation — which is, of course, not true. The transport used in the Philips 950 is a simpler ALPS variant, more basic than those used in many Technics, Onkyo, Yamaha and other decks. The second motor is used exclusively for opening and closing the door and has no direct interaction with the tape transport.

Replacing the idler tire for the winding mechanism requires desoldering the main motor wires (to prevent them from breaking due to repeated bending during service), as well as disconnecting two actuators. The FC950 has one more solenoid than the FC920, because during winding it does not lift the heads, but leaves them in the lower position while activating the reel brakes — a much better solution.

However, the actuators are connected to the PCB with thin enamel wires, which can be damaged during servicing and therefore must be desoldered carefully. On the FC920 this is implemented in a simpler way.

Overall, this type of mechanism strikes me as awkwardly designed and unnecessarily complicated.

It is incredible how one forgets certain things — I was convinced that the FC950 had two motors in the transport, until I discovered that there is only one. I even reviewed photos of my previous FC950 to check whether the same mechanism was used in both units — and it was. The entire transport is based on a single motor, plus the one for the door.

Interestingly, there is a sticker on the bottom of the deck where quality control data were recorded.

Repair

Although the deck was sold to me as fully functional, it turned out to have a hidden and quite troublesome fault, not immediately noticeable — and most likely unknown to the previous owner as well.

While cleaning the heads and pinch roller, the roller carrier started moving along the shaft it sits on. To explain: there are many ways in which roller carriers are secured to the shaft around which they rotate and move to press the roller against the tape and release it again. There is always a shaft, and the securing method usually ranges from retaining clips (“E-clips”) to posts with a tooth that prevents the carrier from sliding off.

For a tooth-based system to work, the roller carrier itself has a plastic protrusion that slides underneath the tooth and prevents the carrier from slipping off the shaft — I marked it in the photo below.

The problem is that this very piece of plastic was broken off. Why? I have no idea how someone managed to do that. Even worse, I was unable to find this type of roller carrier either in my parts collection or anywhere on the Internet. It is simply specific, and there are countless roller carriers — some similar, some completely different.

Here is what the carrier looked like with the broken piece (I marked the remaining fragment in the photo below):

Additionally, this carrier assembly includes two springs: one that presses the roller against the tape (part 155M in the diagram), and another that pulls it back when pressure is no longer needed (156M). There are smarter and simpler systems with a single spring doing both jobs, but here it is implemented differently. Interestingly, the FC920 uses precisely such a simpler and equally effective single-spring solution — but I could not simply transplant the roller carrier, as they are not identical.

On my FC950, the return spring (part 156M) was also missing.

I thought: fine, I’ll check the service manual and make a similar spring. But of course — the manual is so poorly printed that the spring details and its exact mounting points are barely visible.

A memory of the previous FC950

I told myself that I should not have bought this deck at all. Whenever I have an unsolvable problem with a cassette deck and throw it away, it seems bad luck follows me if I buy the same model again. And that is exactly what happened with the FC950.

About fifteen years ago, I bought an FC950 via classified ads — I believe it was an auction, and I certainly did not get it cheaply. When it arrived, I was disappointed: dirty, heavily used, with traces of cigarette smoke, and worst of all — a dying display, which is impossible to fix without a new (unobtainable) display. I felt terrible, but decided to restore the unit as best I could.

For several days I worked carefully on the FC950: disassembled it, washed the mechanism, chassis and electronics, replaced the belt and idler tire, lubricated and reassembled everything. It was a lot of work after my regular job. The deck worked perfectly — except for the display, which remained miserable.

After two days of operation, the FC950 mechanism jammed. I got so angry that I decided I was wasting time on a deck whose soul had been ripped out — and I resolved to vent all my frustration on it.

I removed the cover, ripped out the mechanism and heads and… made a mistake. I did not keep the mechanism, which I absolutely should have — because now, for this other FC950, I would have had the parts and fixed everything in five minutes. God punished me. 🙂

It later turned out — to this day I don’t know how — that a cotton swab stick had been left inside the deck by a previous owner and had worked its way somewhere into the mechanism. All I needed to do was remove it, and everything would have been fine. But fate had other plans.

And the story doesn’t end there: I took the old, unfortunate FC950 to the dumpster, placed it on the ground — and started jumping on it.

At one point, an elderly neighbor lady walked past the dumpster and stared at me in shock. Naturally — I must have looked insane — but at least I was successfully releasing the anger and frustration the FC950 had caused me.

Now… imagine the scene:

Me (calmly stopping): “Good afternoon, neighbor…”

Grandma: “Good afternoon…”

She continued walking, still stunned, and I waited for her to move a bit farther away so I could continue jumping on the remains of the mortally wounded deck.

Dear readers, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand why I thought this new FC950 would end up the same way — though at least I planned to keep the mechanism this time…

Back to this “new” Philips FC950…

Since I don’t own a 3D printer or scanner, I couldn’t design and print a new part. I had already found a suitable piece of plastic to cut, glue and machine to replace the missing section.

Then a simpler idea occurred to me: find a wire with insulation of the appropriate diameter, cut a small piece, glue it in place, and use it as a substitute part that could slide under the tooth and prevent the roller carrier from accidentally slipping off.

First, I sanded down and removed the remnants of the broken original piece from the carrier. Then I measured the distances and concluded that the wire needed to be 1.5–2.0 mm in diameter. I found a standard 1.60 mm wire, cut a piece, shaped it and glued it into position on the carrier.

Next came the spring — and this part was not so simple. It was necessary to find a spring with the correct inner diameter, wire thickness and elasticity, so that it would not excessively load the servo mechanism with its resistance. I was unable to find a spring I was confident in or could suitably modify, despite having spare springs and mechanisms of various types. Therefore, I decided to come up with a solution different from the original.

I found a small conventional spring, slid it over the existing spring that is part of the roller carrier, then drilled a 1 mm hole in the head bridge at a specific location. I adjusted the length (shortened the spring) and hooked it onto the bridge. In this way, the spring moved together with the bridge and pulled the roller carrier back into the lowered position, where it had minimal tension. The system worked flawlessly, even though it differed from the factory design.

In the photos below, you can see the result: the small wire that catches under the plastic tooth and prevents the roller carrier from slipping off, and the spring that returns it.

It seems this FC950 will not end up in the trash after all — nor will I be jumping on it. I’ve broken the streak of bad luck, it seems.

Other issues included crackling in the balance potentiometer during recording — removing the small PCB and cleaning it was once again part of the job, identical to the FC920.

It turned out that the PCB holding the potentiometers does not sit perfectly aligned with the screw holes — it is slightly shifted to one side, a factory defect. This is marked in the photo… the PCB may look scratched, but that is how it left the factory.

Finally, the cassette type selector switches gave me trouble — they had oxidized here as well and required cleaning, just like on the FC920. The azimuth was also incorrect — interestingly, almost exactly the same as on the FC920. Whether this was factory-set or adjusted later, I don’t know, as the screws had no lacquer. The remaining adjustments were almost spot-on and required only minimal tweaking — and only some of them.

Sound

As expected, the FC950 shares the same sonic character as its younger sibling, the FC920. That said, the FC950 sounds slightly more dynamic, a bit brighter, with more detail and a noticeably better soundstage — but the family resemblance is clear.

The deck records and plays back very nicely. It occasionally struggles a bit with sibilants, but nothing dramatic. The soundstage is well balanced and the FC950 is quite musical. However, bass definition on normal tapes is still not fully refined and can sound a bit bloated, while the situation is significantly better with chrome tapes.

Do I like the sound? Yes — it is quite good. However, on sensitive passages you can feel the humble origins of the transport in terms of limited control over wow and flutter. The FC950 is sensitive to the type and quality of the cassette mechanism itself.

Conclusion

I saved a deck whose fate was uncertain. Looking at the unit as a whole, I would say that the Philips FC950 is a solid attempt by the engineers and designers of this famous company to create something new. Its distinctive appearance, control layout and case color set it apart from the competition. The electronics are spot-on.

However, as is often the case with Philips, they made questionable decisions — a machine with this level of electronics clearly deserves a higher-quality transport. At the price it commanded, they could have afforded it, but perhaps greed prevailed.

The Philips FC950 is a sonically quite solid machine, not overly difficult to maintain, and it offers most of what someone needs for decent playback and cassette recording. A clean lower mid-class deck, in my humble opinion.

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