We got a message in the run-up to Christmas with a simple ask. Could we pull off a last-minute repair of a vintage tape recorder and save the day?
When the request came from our long-time friend Claire Downey, the person who first introduced us to Repair Cafés over ten years ago, we knew we had to give it a proper go.
The patient from a charity shop on the bench was an ITT Schaub-Lorenz SL54 Automatic, a Taiwanese-made radio cassette recorder from the mid 1970s, roughly 1974 to 1976. A proper bit of kit, and the kind of thing you do not want to see quietly written off and binned because “sure it’s old”.
Ambrose stepped up to take on the challenge.
If you have ever opened up something like this, the first suspect is nearly always the belts. Those rubber belts drive the moving parts, and after decades they tend to stretch, go shiny, or crumble into sticky bits. You open the case expecting the usual mess, then you cross your fingers that you have a belt in the right size somewhere in the spares box.
This time we got a surprise.
Instead of a belt that had perished with age, we found… a hair bobbin.
Somebody, at some point, had tried to get it going again using whatever they had to hand. Fair play for the creativity, but a hair bobbin is not going to keep the timing and tension right, so the tape speed was off and the audio came out warped.
The good news is we did have the right belt to hand. A straightforward swap, and while we had it open, it turned into a lovely teaching moment. That is a big part of what we do at TOG. It is not only about fixing the thing; it is about sharing repair skills and helping the owner understand what is going on inside their device.
Half an hour later, with the belt fitted and everything buttoned back up, it was time for the real test.
Out came a vintage Beatles mixtape. We hit play. Clean sound through the little speaker. Job done.
Another repair complete, another device saved from landfill, and Christmas officially rescued.
If something breaks over the Christmas stretch, or you unwrap a “project” by accident, do not panic. Bring it along to our next Repair Café on Sunday, 18 January 2026.
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/repair-cafe-tickets-1977495649721?aff=oddtdtcreator