Taking Stuff Apart: Sony TC-800B Portable Reel-to-Reel Recorder

Today we have a Sony TC-800B to take apart. This is a portable Reel-to-Reel recorder is from the late 60's or very early 70's and is the same device that was used to record the watergate tapes. Unlike the TEAC 360S I took apart last week, this machine was very easy to take apart.

The one I came across even had a carrying case, you might notice that the handle is crooked. This thing was somewhat busted up, if you look closely you can see through the window in the case that the plastic covering the reels is cracked too:




The reels:


Glamour shot:


There were just 4 or 5 screws to take off to expose the mechanical guts. Here you can see the pulley from a large motor to the right reel, and another pulley from the left reel to a counter. Also note the trench at the top where all the wires are nicely fed through. At this point there were just a couple more screws holding the whole assembly out of the case:


If you click this picture and look at the original photo you can see that there are 3 bars stacked ontop of each other. These were directly attached to the Play, Stop and Fast Forward buttons. The rewind button reset them:


The pieces came off without much fuss:


Taking it out of the plastic housing and flipping it over reveals the electronics half. I especially like how the PCB curves around the motor:


I noticed that the 'O' in SONY on the PCB was raised in a strange way:


These came off easily, notice the switch in the bottom left:


I got it:


And here is the rest of the harvest: