Aiwa CS-J1 Service Manual

The CS-J1 was one in a series of stereo radio cassette recorders consisting of CS-J1Y, CS-J1YU, and CS-J1YG, manufactured in 1981 by the Aiwa Corporation. This was a high-end personal cassette recorder measuring 155.5 mm × 81 mm × 29.9 mm, and mass 430 g.

Review

This was a wonderful part of electronic engineering history by the Aiwa Corporation with some unique features that will not be commonly found these days. In this design the audio power output is 28.5 mW per channel, and it sounds great through the supplied 28 Ω coil headphones. The electronic design consists of 4 ICs with a plethora of discrete transistor circuits, and consequently this unit requires three alkaline batteries providing approximately 8-hours (EIAJ) of recording operation.

The electronic engineering is impressive because the FM tuner circuitry consists of a FET transistor in the first stage RF amplifier circuit. This is followed by a one transistor FM mixer, and one transistor IF amplifier. For the FM detector they use the KB4454 IC, and the multiplex demodulator IC is TK10280. For the audio design, they use a discrete transistor power amplifier circuit to drive the headphones. The motor regulator circuitry also has discrete transistors, and consequently the speed is wonderfully smooth.

Cost/eBay

Personal stereo recorders are extremely collectable and these early units are becoming rare. Consequently, a unit in mint condition together with its box, headphones, and accessories can fetch in excess of one hundred pounds on a good day. Units that are broken and scratched tend to have a much lower value because they are time-consuming to repair.

Accessories

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