u/Horror-Food69420

I swore I was going to hold off on buying any more players until I saw this beauty from 1987. The eBay listing said it worked great, which was mostly true. The mechanism functions fine, including the auto reverse but the headphone jack was terrible and the volume knob and equalizer sliders were extremely crackly.

Fortunately it was fairly easy to get inside to access the headphone jack. Also fortunate that the belts don't need replacement because while that's definitely doable, it's a fair bit more of a hassle to access those. Just a quick re-solder job on the headphone jack and some cleaning of the knob and sliders and she's playing beautifully.

This is definitely my favorite player from an aesthetic standpoint and since picking up this hobby, I've learned a bit about electronics repair. This should be my last portable for a while, or at least until I find something else too cool to pass up.

I had to restrain myself today when I found a vintage consignment store with tons of tapes. I'll probably break down and go back in a few days to buy the ones I put back. The spending doesn't count when you spread it out, right?

The main score of this for me is Def Leppard - Hysteria on a chrome tape. I really love how chrome tapes sound compared to the cheaper Type I's.

Here is my latest portable player addition. I got this one from the Goodwill website for $11.99 plus S+H. Normally I'm cautious about getting from Goodwill since they typically do no more testing than to see if it accepts power. This one had been professionally refurbished at some point according to the sticker on the side (no idea when that was) so I decided to take a chance on it. Fortunately every function works absolutely perfectly and it's in pretty great condition overall. It has the strongest play performance out of any of my portables.

As far as I can tell, this model was released in 1996. It has some pretty cool features compared to the other two older portables that I own. The build quality is robust and the locking mechanism is pretty fun. I really like the auto reverse function, my other players don't have that. The weather stripping inside is intact and so are the two rubber external port covers. I've got a replacement belt clip on the way. Overall, I'm pretty stoked about this one.