Congratulations. Great job. Thanks for the finished product pics. Looks plenty bright enough in the pic.
Cheers Bob
Thanks.
If you just look at this Walkman, it looks very bright. But if you put it next to one of the working Walkmans with a very bright aqua EL panel, it looks softer. As Aqua is the natural colour of electroluminescence, it makes sence.
Once I receive aqua EL panels, I will put them in Walkmans with very low AC volatge. I just to make sure that I don’t short them!
I aslo seal edges of EL panels with UV glue, so they don’t get moisture inside and affect their performance.
Cheers
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Sounds excellent Hiroshi,
I’m excited to see how it looks! The white EL panel looks just like some of the originals did back then. Excellent job on the restoration!
Hi all, here are more pics for restoring vintage Sony Walkmans.
This pic shows ‘before and after’ replacing an older dying EL panel with a new Adafruit EL panel (Aqua). The original EL panel is very green, and this one is really faint (as it is nearly 30 years old). The new EL panel is bright and more blue-ish, which I really like. I managed to salvage most of a 10cm x 10cm aqua EL panel, making around 4 or 5 small EL panels for the Walkmans. It’s a slow and painful process as you need to be very careful and gentle to peel off a thin layer of plastic to expose 2 terminal surfaces.
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Hey Hiroshi,
Awesome to see the finished product of a project such as this, definitely got a lot more of an 80s vibe now!
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Thanks! The DAT (Digital Audio Tape) technology was developed by Sony in the mid 80’s and released in 1987. Portable DAT recorders were first releasd in the late 80’s. Sony was a bit late in the game, releasing its first DAT Walkman in 1991. The photo is showing the first Sony DAT Walkman TCD-D3. In regards to the sound quality, this first model is the best, with a really good audio amp, producing dynamic and spacious sound.
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