Panasonic RQ44A late 70s/early 80s “Coca-Cola” Cassette Player not playing tapes
I’m hoping someone can help me troubleshoot this cassette tape player. This could be a long shot, but I was cleaning out my family members house this week after his wife moved to hospice and came upon this cassette player. He passed away before I was born (26 or so years ago) and no one ever really touched the player after he died. He was a Coca-Cola employee at an old bottling plant in Texas in the 1960s-1990s and had a ton of Coca-Cola memorabilia that was given to him from the company, more exclusive things the public wouldn’t have had the same kind of access to. This was one of those items. I put a tape in today and it was struggling to play it (the sound was very muffled and poor quality and the play button had to be held for a second or two so the spring could fully latch) so I cleaned the tape head and battery port and tried again, it played great! Except, after that singular play, it gave up entirely. I put a different tape in and it wouldn’t play the tape, all I could hear was the motor spinning. I figured it would be something like a slipped/broken belt since it hadn’t been used in so long and was likely weak before properly playing. I opened up the back to see if I could fix it the way I’ve fixed up a couple old cassette players before. Unfortunately, it’s too complex inside for me to figure out. I don’t even know where to start and I’m actually hesitant to do anything myself because it’s sentimental to me. I’m hoping someone in here might recognize the hardware, know a good repair person, or has some good troubleshooting questions I can answer. If not, it’ll just remain a “relic” of mine, which is fine by me.