I have a lot of DCC recorders most of them I got defective and then self restored due to experience in high end analog gear, hi-fi and shortwave. I have the test eqipment and test tapes so many of my dcc,s work well now.
What I found annoying ist that the later generations lacked inputs , vu-meters and the build quality and interchangability of tapes deteriorated, so I tried to find a DCC900.
On this unit I could not test boards because the mechanical block is JAMMED. I checked the belts OK but beside that I found a cracked and loose toothwheel on the motor which should spin the forward and reverse. I glued it back but it must be the result not the reason for the problem. The motor cracked the wheel because of the jammed mechanics. Then the wheel left its position and lost contact whith the brown tooth wheel there under.
The mechanical block is now jammed as before. I tries to move the tape spindles in forward but stops with creaking sound immediately. In rev and play it does nothing. There is also no movement or turning of the heads.
So dear DCC Docs and specialist. Would you like to help me getting this running again ???
Hi,
Never seen this problem on our bench.
We can help by taking a look at it if you like, or you could provide pictures, so we can try and assist here.
There are spare mechanisms available at the museum, so we could provide parts as well.
I have made a photo of the damaged toothwheel with the crack in it. After removing I found that it has left its Position so I moved it back and glued it later providing free run as needed.
What I think is that another fault took this DCC out of Service so the owner did some bad things trying to repair and after complete failure sold this Thing to me……
To check the electronics which I assume are the initial Problem I have to get the mech block running first.
Please let me know which Options at what cost I have.
Dear DCC Fans,
To stay on track with the topic I will report what I could do with my DCC 900 maybe with some hints…
My repair of the spooling gear with the glued motor tooth wheel was sucessful but the mech was completely blocked by an repair vattempt of the seller. To confirm the torgue and play of the spooling gear I purchased another defective DCC900 but it was OK with my glueing.
You can use super glue but make sure there is enough axial play so that the white arm swings free from ff to rew.
To unblock the mech I had to turn the black central wheel to one of the play positions and then reassemble the block.(same procedure as changing flat belt…)
When doing this you should in addition to the known manuals make sure that the belt is not conflicting the white spooling lever. There is a little hole in the metal bracket and you should see the belt beside the white spooling lever.
When disassembling the 900 I made a mistake by disassembling like the other DCC,s in removing the tray bezel to gain play for fiddling the mech out.
Don,t do it with the 900 !! The tray front will not click back even with strong force !!
Instead loose the complete front and tilt it to gain the play to get the mech out
When cleaning the pinch rollers you have to remove a very tiny screw from the casette slider opener.
These screws are glued in and in my case no force and no screwdriver turned the screw so I had to drill it out and replace it.
You will have to turn the slider a bit out of the down position otherwise the pinch rollers are locked down. I prefer for this model cleaning with IPA against replacing to maintain original head /tape positions.
So I fixed a good 10 DCC machines up to now and the DCC 900 is up and running again.
The future will hopefully bring parts to fix the electrolytic pest and maybe the energy to fix the second one too.
