This is probably obvious, but I take a bunch of pictures from multiple angles whenever I disassemble stuff, and sometimes even shoot video of it (slow and steady!). Sometimes those pictures are invaluable when I'm trying to get it back together again. I also got a pair of those magnifying goggles Adrian Black uses, and they make a huge difference; repairing things is almost fun again!
Yeah pretty obvious, but still needs to be repeated, as I (like Afzaal Khan.M i'm old now 60) and forget stuff. Took something (I can't even remember that) apart a few months ago and forgot where the bits I took apart went. Had to throw it out. EDIT Took a few hours, I remembered it was a toaster.
Handy video. Belts are a nightmare sometimes especially on radio cassettes which are not really designed to be fixed as they were sold as throw away items. Proper decks like this aren't so bad. Good job on the swap and relatively straight forward thankfully.
I bought belts from the same eBay guy in Portugal. He has good quality belts, and you don't have to do any work. Yes, generic belts are cheaper. But for under $20, it's not a big deal. I'll order from him again if necessary.
The Web Spare Parts seller is active on the TapeHeads forum (Julio). Has a good reputation for decent quality belts at a reasonable price. Great for decks like these that aren't ridiculously sensitive to w&f specs.
I've had good luck boiling belts for 5 minutes in water and than wiping them good with belt / rubber conditioner. I did this on a couple of CD Players I have and it fixed the issue with the tray not opening.
I just want to say Vwestlife that you're one of my favorite TH-camrs hands-down. You're down to earth and straight to the point, and I as well as many others appreciate that greatly. Keep it up! You're the reason I love stuff like this!
Very nice demonstration of belt replacement on clam-shell design cassette mechanism. I recently attempted to do a belt replacement on a Maganavox all-in-one stereo that had a plastic mechanism that was held together with brittle clips and adhesive, no screws in sight. With it's disposable-by-design nature, my project was a failure, and the vid got shelved.
One thing those Sony's have that I like very much is the "Auto Cal" button that sets the decks bias to the tape exactly, it works great and makes any tape sound great. I think that is what that "Auto Bias" is on that Philips of yours. Nice deck Kevin. -Kevin
Just replaced the belts in a Philips FC731 thanks to this video. Unfortunately it didn't resolve the problem I.e. the deck won't fast forward or rewind. If anybody has managed to fix this I'd be grateful for the solution. Thanks again for taking the time to make this video.
You have created an excellent how to belt replacement guide. Better than most I have seen. I wonder how long it would take most people to find that small Phillips screw that was still holding the thing together. Great video, interesting as usual.
Good one, very wise and helpful. A bit of advice to all users of mechanical things. You need to use them once in a while or they have troubles. Case in point; CD/DVD decks on your computer. Most have a little belt that is the part that opens and closes that drawer, if it sets for to long it gets stuck in' it's egg shape and will just spin there. Cars can also have their problems, if they set to long.
Thanks. I have two identical decks to re-belt. One is branded Pioneer and the other Optimus but they are identical. Maybe like you said I should practice on a less important deck, but all I have is a 90's Sony Boom box and they are often very hard to expose the mechanisim well enough to work on it because they are so tightly packed.
Oddly enough I just replaced a drive belt, although mine was in a vacuum cleaner. The old belt was stretched so badly the lettering on it was visibly stretched. Replacing it was stupidly easy, it would be great if cassette belts were that easy, too. Fortunately all the cassette equipment at my home seems to be working fine now. Although if I had known about cassette belts years ago we might have been able to save my father's old Harman Kardon deck from 1984.
I've got a Tascam CC-222 Mk II introduced 10 years after your Philips and it's interesting to see how much better quality your 10yr older deck is. The Tascam does not even have weighted capstan flywheels, so the wow & flutter is horrible, even with a fresh belt.
Very informative video! Got a few vintage portable stereos with faulty cassette decks. How difficult is doing this process on them? I know they're full of spaghetti wires.
I'm so glad my two main Technics decks are quartz locked direct drive without any belts whatsoever.. well apart from one of them has automatic eject and close which is belt driven but that belt is very easy to get to and near enough any similar sized belt would do its job
I have a SONY Tape Deck I purchased brand new at Best Buy's in 2005, and it uses no belts except for the take up reel. The Capstans are actually tips of the direct drive motors. Never had any problems with it, since the belts are eliminated. Wish they used similar technology on older decks.
Convenient, but the belts are not there by accident - they _could_ have been designed out (as you see on yours). For one, it's a torque limiter -- mostly in case something bad happens. It's one way to stop the tape from spooling if it binds, the end-of-tape sensor isn't working correctly, etc. More typically, it's a buffer between the motor and the drive mechanism, so any small variations in speed cause contractions and expansions of the belt and reduce the impact to the speed of the tape.
Beautiful, but it deeply saddens me to see high quality tape decks reduced to the status of rare finds. Man too often throws out the baby with the bath water when he moves ahead technologically. If only a new Edison could arise and figure out how to control both spindles and the capstan with three dedicated motors. Do away with belts altogether. Although the electronics would obviously be highly advanced, there would be a beauty in resulting simplicity--no more clockwork mechanisms to go haywire in a few years. We could finally return to our beloved format using machines that sounded great and no longer ate tapes.
There's no way that WOULDN'T be possible. Look at the engineering that went into the controls for the laser on a CD player. If we put that much effort into tape decks, we'd surely have switched by now!
Direct drive tape decks exist, it's just a price vs. performance thing. And adding more motors brings more complexity and less reliability in other ways.
I bought a Clarion ADX5655z at a junk yard. It’s a car stereo with a full logic tape deck. I modified the power to support a cigarette lighter plug, and wired it with an aux out cable to play in my ‘04 Envoy. I still use and MAKE mix tapes in 2020.
What I really don't like about this kind of mediocore transport is the lack of real weight in the flywheel, just hollow plastic or a thin piece of stamped sheet steel. It must be mechanically perfect in order to have W&F just within its tolerance. Once the belt had aged up (like in this case) W&F will be immediately gone busted.
What a nice design on those decks!!! I have changed a lot of belts,,, never anything this simple.... I have a fisher deck that has five,, dam belts in it...number five is hidden inside the mechanics.... and I would have never seen it if I hadn’t of ripped the entire deck apart... total nightmare
Un buon lavoro.le cinghiette vecchie,da cambiare,ma perfettamente intatte,questo fa vedere e CAPIRE il livello qualitativo della philips,altro che il pastrocchio di colla di cinghiette fuse che ho visto spesso
That tape deck looks like it was made in the last batch of quality machines that manufactures put out right before they started to make crap, unfix-able poor spec tape decks. But Philips is a pretty good company. I bought a 32 inch flat screen Philips TV in 2007. I use it every day for at least an hour and it works perfectly. It also has "front firing" speakers that helps with sound clarity. Most flat screen TVs now have the down or side firing speakers which always sound muddy to me.
I just bought belts for all my machines. The only one working are a small sony cassette corder and an RCA desktop cassette recorder. All my other machines have weak belts but they do work but rewind is very weak and I have to do the pencil trick.
Great hand to eye dexterity in reverse engineering i do like your tutorials .l was wondering if you know of tanberg 3014 i do have one in mint condition original owner my plight is im afraid to turn it ON maybe the belts have melted what should i do?
I started to try and change some belts in a few old decks I have. None of them have kits available so I have to use generic belts. I am not sure on how tight the belts are supposed to be. Is there supposed to be any slack or do they have to be super tight?
Amazingky good work. It is impossible and reallly expensive to get belts in Patagonia Argentina, and no servive for these things at all, so we have to recycle them or go to the trash *sighs*. You have to work +12 hs to get one belt.
Thanks - I’m going to attempt a belt replacement for a Fisher ph-w803 cassette deck and hoping that it is NOT a clamshell design because this didn’t look easy at all
Did you ever find a fix for this? I've just replaced the belts in mine hoping it would be the solution for the same problem you were having but no luck.
Very similar to my Harmon Kardon CD-91. Except there was an additional belt for the analog counter. out of the 4 decks I have that all needed belts. I ended up choosing the HK because the other three would require extensive levels of disassembly.
Love the counter on that Philips, the look is different than the Sonys with those dotted lines. I have a couple of Sonys I need to replace the belts on, not looking forward to that!
On my deck an Onkyo TA WR 255 on the recording sise ot seems that it tends to sounds like it needs batteries and wants to eat the tape i notice with a couple of tape. The other side playes just fine... I have no places near me that can fix this problem. Any ideas as to it might be.
Can you tell us how you removed the black cable with the pins going to the mechanism (shown at 4:32)? The white plastic piece that holds that kind of cable is difficult to lift.
10:55 But I care for all cassette decks... And I found the "Somewhat Straight" Easter Egg at around 11:27 and the "Tapes Tapes" at 12:42 in this video. Do I win a prize?
Tenho um FC 731 ele toca normal mais na isso não avança e nem retrocede girei uma engrenagem que fica na ponta ele avançou e retrpcedeu mais o play ficou avançando. Tem alguma idéia
Nice video. It was made in Portugal I suppose in a Grundig factory: at that time Grundig was controlled by Philips and some audio and videorecorder in Philips european catalog were made in Grundig factories. Inside is not Phlips at all, it is 100% Grundig.Tape deck is Japan made.
clean head with spirits ...and run it on fast speed a few times. i never hear stupid things like this. but rubber ...is just like a new track boots it have to break in alittle.
I got a old Onkyo double cassette ta-rw313 I got a new one 1993 with a matching receiver tx-sv313pro and I still got it it was my first real stereo before that I have my father's old quasar self-contained stereo that had an axillary input that I use my first cd player
Direct drive mechanisms made on the cheap would directly transfer motor noise to a ridiculous extent, they take a lot of engineering not to do so and belong in the price range just a few will want to pay for.
![ILLSLICK - WINTER IS COMING [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dwTMeM1zIhQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![[Gegagedigedagedago] NEW Help Gegagedigedagedago Nugget escape from Nikocado Avocado Challenge](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hJWnwRC2Fz8/mqdefault.jpg)
Techmoan and VWestlife keeping the rubber belt industrial complex alive
Me too, cause i buy packs of belts in case i need them. However my walkman might need them soon.
yea your not wrong
Guilty... replacing the belts on my Onkyo TA-2056 today...
This is probably obvious, but I take a bunch of pictures from multiple angles whenever I disassemble stuff, and sometimes even shoot video of it (slow and steady!). Sometimes those pictures are invaluable when I'm trying to get it back together again. I also got a pair of those magnifying goggles Adrian Black uses, and they make a huge difference; repairing things is almost fun again!
Indeed more so with old folks like self
Yeah pretty obvious, but still needs to be repeated, as I (like Afzaal Khan.M
i'm old now 60) and forget stuff. Took something (I can't even remember that) apart a few months ago and forgot where the bits I took apart went. Had to throw it out.
EDIT
Took a few hours, I remembered it was a toaster.
Handy video. Belts are a nightmare sometimes especially on radio cassettes which are not really designed to be fixed as they were sold as throw away items. Proper decks like this aren't so bad. Good job on the swap and relatively straight forward thankfully.
I bought belts from the same eBay guy in Portugal. He has good quality belts, and you don't have to do any work. Yes, generic belts are cheaper. But for under $20, it's not a big deal. I'll order from him again if necessary.
Yep. Same here. Especially useful if the original belts have perished so its not clear what the correct size is. I just order the right pack.
The Web Spare Parts seller is active on the TapeHeads forum (Julio). Has a good reputation for decent quality belts at a reasonable price. Great for decks like these that aren't ridiculously sensitive to w&f specs.
I've had good luck boiling belts for 5 minutes in water and than wiping them good with belt / rubber conditioner. I did this on a couple of CD Players I have and it fixed the issue with the tray not opening.
This only works with neoprene belts and other synthetic compounds. Rubber will just melt down.
I just want to say Vwestlife that you're one of my favorite TH-camrs hands-down. You're down to earth and straight to the point, and I as well as many others appreciate that greatly. Keep it up! You're the reason I love stuff like this!
Jose Herrera he is truly fantastic!!!i have been a fan for years...
Well said
Very nice demonstration of belt replacement on clam-shell design cassette mechanism. I recently attempted to do a belt replacement on a Maganavox all-in-one stereo that had a plastic mechanism that was held together with brittle clips and adhesive, no screws in sight. With it's disposable-by-design nature, my project was a failure, and the vid got shelved.
just prise it apart and use superglue or uv resin to put it back together..
Your videos are great therapy! I enjoy them very much!
Richard Morgan his voice is so relaxing
Digging that song at the end
Me too. Great track
One thing those Sony's have that I like very much is the "Auto Cal" button that sets the decks bias to the tape exactly, it works great and makes any tape sound great. I think that is what that "Auto Bias" is on that Philips of yours. Nice deck Kevin.
-Kevin
Just replaced the belts in a Philips FC731 thanks to this video. Unfortunately it didn't resolve the problem I.e. the deck won't fast forward or rewind. If anybody has managed to fix this I'd be grateful for the solution. Thanks again for taking the time to make this video.
You have created an excellent how to belt replacement guide. Better than most I have seen. I wonder how long it would take most people to find that small Phillips screw that was still holding the thing together. Great video, interesting as usual.
Wow! Nice deck! I Have the CD player from that series, still working fine.
You can’t go wrong with any 900 series CD player . Nice
This is great! Love seeing stuff like this taken apart and fixed. The music was really good too. I'll check them out!
Ten points for the thumbnail
I got a laugh from the thumbnail
Same here.
Yup, loved the thumbnail !
Good one, very wise and helpful. A bit of advice to all users of mechanical things. You need to use them once in a while or they have troubles. Case in point; CD/DVD decks on your computer. Most have a little belt that is the part that opens and closes that drawer, if it sets for to long it gets stuck in' it's egg shape and will just spin there. Cars can also have their problems, if they set to long.
A few drops of oil to the capstan bearings can also help to reduce W&F on an aging deck
Nice job👌. Good to see a Panasonic motor in there! They get everywhere,excellent motors. Keep safe😃
ive ordered belts from that manufacture and their pretty good ive used loads your videos are so amazing i watch them regularly !
Daniel
UK
Lots of ground wires.. It's a very 'down to earth' cassete deck unit indeed.
I don't think i've ever seen so many lol.
Thanks. I have two identical decks to re-belt. One is branded Pioneer and the other Optimus but they are identical. Maybe like you said I should practice on a less important deck, but all I have is a 90's Sony Boom box and they are often very hard to expose the mechanisim well enough to work on it because they are so tightly packed.
Oddly enough I just replaced a drive belt, although mine was in a vacuum cleaner. The old belt was stretched so badly the lettering on it was visibly stretched. Replacing it was stupidly easy, it would be great if cassette belts were that easy, too. Fortunately all the cassette equipment at my home seems to be working fine now. Although if I had known about cassette belts years ago we might have been able to save my father's old Harman Kardon deck from 1984.
I've got a Tascam CC-222 Mk II introduced 10 years after your Philips and it's interesting to see how much better quality your 10yr older deck is. The Tascam does not even have weighted capstan flywheels, so the wow & flutter is horrible, even with a fresh belt.
Very informative video! Got a few vintage portable stereos with faulty cassette decks. How difficult is doing this process on them? I know they're full of spaghetti wires.
There is instructions to replace the belts in my Pioneer CT-225 service manual
I'm so glad my two main Technics decks are quartz locked direct drive without any belts whatsoever.. well apart from one of them has automatic eject and close which is belt driven but that belt is very easy to get to and near enough any similar sized belt would do its job
This video was release on my birthday
I have a SONY Tape Deck I purchased brand new at Best Buy's in 2005, and it uses no belts except for the take up reel. The Capstans are actually tips of the direct drive motors. Never had any problems with it, since the belts are eliminated. Wish they used similar technology on older decks.
Convenient, but the belts are not there by accident - they _could_ have been designed out (as you see on yours). For one, it's a torque limiter -- mostly in case something bad happens. It's one way to stop the tape from spooling if it binds, the end-of-tape sensor isn't working correctly, etc. More typically, it's a buffer between the motor and the drive mechanism, so any small variations in speed cause contractions and expansions of the belt and reduce the impact to the speed of the tape.
Beautiful, but it deeply saddens me to see high quality tape decks reduced to the status of rare finds. Man too often throws out the baby with the bath water when he moves ahead technologically. If only a new Edison could arise and figure out how to control both spindles and the capstan with three dedicated motors. Do away with belts altogether. Although the electronics would obviously be highly advanced, there would be a beauty in resulting simplicity--no more clockwork mechanisms to go haywire in a few years. We could finally return to our beloved format using machines that sounded great and no longer ate tapes.
There's no way that WOULDN'T be possible. Look at the engineering that went into the controls for the laser on a CD player. If we put that much effort into tape decks, we'd surely have switched by now!
Direct drive tape decks exist, it's just a price vs. performance thing. And adding more motors brings more complexity and less reliability in other ways.
The test song is my favorite of his 👍
You had me @ the belt pic. Very cool.
"Somewhat straight" ...if only Linus, if only! Hahaha
I bought a Clarion ADX5655z at a junk yard. It’s a car stereo with a full logic tape deck. I modified the power to support a cigarette lighter plug, and wired it with an aux out cable to play in my ‘04 Envoy. I still use and MAKE mix tapes in 2020.
What I really don't like about this kind of mediocore transport is the lack of real weight in the flywheel, just hollow plastic or a thin piece of stamped sheet steel. It must be mechanically perfect in order to have W&F just within its tolerance. Once the belt had aged up (like in this case) W&F will be immediately gone busted.
What a nice design on those decks!!! I have changed a lot of belts,,, never anything this simple.... I have a fisher deck that has five,, dam belts in it...number five is hidden inside the mechanics.... and I would have never seen it if I hadn’t of ripped the entire deck apart... total nightmare
Job well done there VW.👍👍
Un buon lavoro.le cinghiette vecchie,da cambiare,ma perfettamente intatte,questo fa vedere e CAPIRE il livello qualitativo della philips,altro che il pastrocchio di colla di cinghiette fuse che ho visto spesso
To straighten the belt and make sure it's not going to come off before reassembly, couldn't you just have turned the motor and pulleys by hand?
I bought a few kits from web spare parts for cassette decks, highly recommend!
That tape deck looks like it was made in the last batch of quality machines that manufactures put out right before they started to make crap, unfix-able poor spec tape decks.
But Philips is a pretty good company. I bought a 32 inch flat screen Philips TV in 2007. I use it every day for at least an hour and it works perfectly. It also has "front firing" speakers that helps with sound clarity. Most flat screen TVs now have the down or side firing speakers which always sound muddy to me.
After the mid to late ‘90s, everything became disposable.
No this is pretty much crap too
The mechanism is garbage, the display is ugly. More importantly sounds inspiring.
I just bought belts for all my machines. The only one working are a small sony cassette corder and an RCA desktop cassette recorder. All my other machines have weak belts but they do work but rewind is very weak and I have to do the pencil trick.
It's one of those things you gotta have patience for, or else haha.
Great hand to eye dexterity in reverse engineering i do like your tutorials .l was wondering if you know of tanberg 3014 i do have one in mint condition original owner my plight is im afraid to turn it ON maybe the belts have melted what should i do?
Did Philips manufacture their own mechanisms? Haven't seen one like that before.
I started to try and change some belts in a few old decks I have. None of them have kits available so I have to use generic belts. I am not sure on how tight the belts are supposed to be. Is there supposed to be any slack or do they have to be super tight?
There should be some flex to the belt when you push or pull on it -- not super tight.
@@vwestlife Thank you for the info!!
Amazingky good work. It is impossible and reallly expensive to get belts in Patagonia Argentina, and no servive for these things at all, so we have to recycle them or go to the trash *sighs*. You have to work +12 hs to get one belt.
Thanks - I’m going to attempt a belt replacement for a Fisher ph-w803 cassette deck and hoping that it is NOT a clamshell design because this didn’t look easy at all
for english: i have a philips FC 731 double deck all ok functions except forward and reverse does not work. Any idea of the problem.Thank you
Did you ever find a fix for this? I've just replaced the belts in mine hoping it would be the solution for the same problem you were having but no luck.
That thumbnail! 😂😂
Very similar to my Harmon Kardon CD-91. Except there was an additional belt for the analog counter. out of the 4 decks I have that all needed belts. I ended up choosing the HK because the other three would require extensive levels of disassembly.
i like the classical music in the background. Was that to fight the air condition?
Please tell me how to remove the cassette window to adjust the azimuth? Should I disassemble the whole cassette module?
Love the counter on that Philips, the look is different than the Sonys with those dotted lines. I have a couple of Sonys I need to replace the belts on, not looking forward to that!
Mechanism looks to be a bit better than a lot of 90s cassette decks .
question how did you record the music on your camera? just with your phone listening to the speaker? or did you plug direct audio in electronically?
A direct connection to the camcorder's microphone input via an attenuation cable.
what is the size of the belts in centimeters?
what is the size of the belt?
Where'd you buy the belts?
Just found out I can save this (in TH-cam), so have in case I lose it again.
where i can buy belts for Philips FC951??
Dunno if I said that before in the previous video but I have one of these.
The main problem is that the panel acts like crazy.
The mechanism is noisy when playing forward, any ideas why?
I’ve heard that slugbug music on your channel a few times and I like it, it’s quite quirky, are they still going?
I'm pretty sure he's still making music. He also has a TH-cam channel. 'pdmillar'
On my deck an Onkyo TA WR 255 on the recording sise ot seems that it tends to sounds like it needs batteries and wants to eat the tape i notice with a couple of tape. The other side playes just fine... I have no places near me that can fix this problem. Any ideas as to it might be.
Very informative I never really changed belt on cassette deck. liked that thumbnail pic I thought very good pun there. Lol
Good synesthesia video
So thats a great idea with those pegs
Can you tell us how you removed the black cable with the pins going to the mechanism (shown at 4:32)? The white plastic piece that holds that kind of cable is difficult to lift.
You pry up the edges of the white retaining clip to unlock it, and then you can easily pull out the black cable.
Great Ep!
10:55 But I care for all cassette decks... And I found the "Somewhat Straight" Easter Egg at around 11:27 and the "Tapes Tapes" at 12:42 in this video. Do I win a prize?
good selection of music
Tenho um FC 731 ele toca normal mais na isso não avança e nem retrocede girei uma engrenagem que fica na ponta ele avançou e retrpcedeu mais o play ficou avançando. Tem alguma idéia
what did you film this video on?
A Canon Vixia HF200 camcorder, the same as I usually use.
12:42 do I see a future where vwestlife shitposts?
Love the content btw
Nice video. It was made in Portugal I suppose in a Grundig factory: at that time Grundig was controlled by Philips and some audio and videorecorder in Philips european catalog were made in Grundig factories. Inside is not Phlips at all, it is 100% Grundig.Tape deck is Japan made.
What's the name of the song which begins from nintendo chiptune?
It's all part of the same song.
Assembled in Portugal?? Wow I never knew that!
900 series was made all over Europe CD players were made in Belgium.
Nice.sir.
Did anyone else hear that linn drum action?
Think while I had it apart, I would've just replaced both.
I agree with this 100 percent.
I probably would have too. However, the left deck is in spec, and if wow and flutter is critical, he can just use the right one.
Love from #Assam
Very good
clean head with spirits ...and run it on fast speed a few times. i never hear stupid things like this. but rubber ...is just like a new track boots it have to break in alittle.
Like for the thumbnail
I got a old Onkyo double cassette ta-rw313 I got a new one 1993 with a matching receiver tx-sv313pro and I still got it it was my first real stereo before that I have my father's old quasar self-contained stereo that had an axillary input that I use my first cd player
I have an old deck I need to replace belts for, but I'm that combination of lazy and busy that makes it harder to get around to it. 😐
سلام.ضبط فیلیپس دولبه رابخواهیم چجوری باید تهیه کرد.
Wow!
16$ ? you've got ripped big time bro!
I have a Philips DCC900 which no longer works because the capacitors have dried out but won't even play digital tapes.
The capacitors have actually leaked out and corroded the PCB. Needs not just a recap, but a cleanup job as well! This happens on DCC machines.
Slugbug sounds like what would happen if the guys from They Might Be Giants had a love child together.
Belt degradation is a reason to go with a direct drive turntable (wouldn’t it be nice if they had a direct drive cassette player???!!!).
They do make them. Sony, Nakamichi and Denon each have models I’m aware of
@@b2d327 *did
Those do exist, if you're ready to pay for them.
It seems like everything had Torx screws in the mid-‘90s.
Hmmm, someone have the FC930 and those mechanisms are made from plastic. There is also a cheese gear inside that needs to be replaced.
Interesting. Have several dual cassette decks. They all power on but won't play. Probably toss them soon.
For some strange reason I now want to watch Linus tech tips, and....... saved by the bell?
13 Reasons Why.
@@vwestlife I am slow I guess,(not my only issue), I don't get what your trying to say.
White Castle, Portugal, LOL
I use Webspareparts all the time for belts, the one time I did not, because he did not have them, they were wrong.
I don't know why they had to use belts for stereo components. Why couldn't they use METAL gears that wont's crack over time.
Direct drive mechanisms made on the cheap would directly transfer motor noise to a ridiculous extent, they take a lot of engineering not to do so and belong in the price range just a few will want to pay for.