Walkman woes

[famous beagle]

So in my search for a working Walkman, I've run into the same issue three times:

I buy one off eBay -- "Fully tested! Works great!" -- only to find that the belt is shit. So I replace the belt, and it seems to be working fine after that. Good playback with no warble. But after a short while --- maybe a few hours of use --- the warble starts to show up, and playback gets progressively slower.

The current one I have (a Sony FX251) that's experiencing this issue isn't really that old. It's from 1997. So it doesn't seem as though the caps should be dying by this point, right?

Does anyone have a clue as to what the issue is? Is it just the motor going bad ... or? Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Ujn Hunter]

Might be a dumb question... but is this happening with more than one tape? i.e. Is it the tape that's the problem?

 

[famous beagle]

Might be a dumb question... but is this happening with more than one tape? i.e. Is it the tape that's the problem?

Not a dumb question; that's a good one. I was pretty sure it was happening with several tapes, but I wanted to verify. So I just put another tape in, and it was working fine.

Then I put the tape in I was listening to this morning while working out --- the one that was warbling ... right from the beginning --- and now it's working fine too.

And a third tape is working fine as well.

So ....???

Maybe it was a battery issue ... or something? I haven't changed the batteries since this morning (I'm pretty sure they're good), but maybe they weren't making good, full contact ... or something? ... I dunno.

It does have a DC input jack, so I'll try it with an adapter and see if the performance seems to change at all.

I imagine that the problem will return soon, but we'll see.