The broken sound and speed: to be continued....

The defect power supply: Most of the VX5x00 have problems with the power supply. 20 years of use have left some wear and tear, some more, some less. Up to now i found on every VX at least one defect cap in this power supply, none of them was 100% intact. The power supply is easy to remove. Just remove the black steel cover on the back, two bolts. Remove

The defect tuner unit: The tuner has also some caps inside and becomes pretty warm in standby.... and hot if defect. The sysmptom is a noisy black picture. The repair itself is easy... but the tuner unit has to be unsoldered from the upper mainboard. That's very difficult without experience... I use for the 1uf and 6.8uf MKS types, they last a lifetime

The broken loading unit: If you see something like this, then the loading unit is broken. http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/7349/p1060018sm9.jpg OK, the real reason is a defect capstan motor. The motor did not reverse and has broken the gearbox. Maybe a very rude owner can also cause this defect by pushing the tape inside fighting against the crazy

The North American model is very similar to the European VX, almost no difference. The boards are almost the same, just the electronic parts are for NTSC system instead of PAL. I know this tape loading defect, yes... i think that will/should be in the workshop, too. Martin

How to dismantle the VX: OK, here we are, a quite normal black VX5000. There is no difference to VX5500 or VX7000. The steel cabinet and all covers are quite the same. This one here had an accident, it was dropped by the owner... you see later what happened http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/5321/p1060009sw2.jpg Put some thick newspaper or a towel on

Yes Next week on the "Workshop MX5500 MX3500 Power Supply" ... The MX5500 is one of the best tv sets ever built, besides some newer models MX6000/7000/8000. And it can be repaired. Martin

I have no BC2200 repaired yet, but some BC5500/6500/7000 and some had the same problem. Have you cleaned the axles of the deck? Test it with fast forward and rewind. If it is really slow and without power, then the old grease has become very sticky. The newer decks have a small washer on the top of the axles, remove them, pull off the cassette wheels

Just have a look at the VX workshop Probably next week i have an old MX5500 for repair here in my hobbyshop... i'll take some pictures and partlists. Martin

It's not very expensive, the material is around 30-50 Euro. But it's a lot of work to exchanche them all, i need around one day per VX. The types are not very different, most of them are 3.3uf, 4.7uf, 10uf, 47uf and some bigger ones in the power supply. Nothing really special. What helps is, using miniature types an the mainboards. The reason