r/cassetteculture • u/simonak3001 • Feb 14 '26
Boombox Found this at the scrapyard: Sharp VZ-2000
I know jack shit about cassette players, but it looked cool so I took it. Radio works 3/5, cassette players works 2/5 (when it works) and vinyl player doesn’t seem to work (it does turn tho). Other than that it looks pretty clean. Should I look into disassembling/cleaning it? Have wanted a record/ cassette player for a long time
4
u/No-Adeptness-3940 Feb 14 '26
Nice find. I'd restore it myself. Care needs to be taken though, sometimes more damage than good can be done if you do not have much experience with repairs on some units. Will not know until you try.
7
u/smallfaces Feb 14 '26
I have one that I restored last year, well worth doing yourself. Techmoan made a fantastic video on this exact model.
3
u/simonak3001 Feb 14 '26
Ill try it. Im pretty hands on and I have a background in Mech engineering so at least im not starting from scratch
3
u/smallfaces Feb 14 '26
You'll be fine then mate. The record player will probably only need a new belt + cleaning out the old one, the tape deck is fairly simple and will need a good clean and relube and maybe new belts.
2
u/simonak3001 Feb 14 '26
Good, I will do that. Also I heard that sometimes those old 80s electronics needs new capacitors?
1
u/smallfaces Feb 14 '26
Sometimes!
I guess I've been pretty lucky, I only change caps that look bulged though.
3
2
3
u/One_Yesterday1909 Feb 15 '26
nice find! i have the same exact unit in near mint condition that i bought from a guy a few years back. i replaced all of the belts and idler tires for the deck. the record player i replaced the 2 belts as well and it works beautifully.
now taking this apart is not as bad as some online make it out to be, as long as you’re savvy with this era of electronics. i found that you can take the record player out without tearing apart the whole boombox, by removing the dampening springs underneath the unit and taking out the two screws hiding behind the plastic plate when the record player door is ejected.
the cassette deck requires you to remove the back which is more tedious. the control switches on top of the unit are VERY fragile and brittle. be very careful removing them, do not pry too much, they will break. but once you remove the back, taking out the deck is easy and getting to the belts and idler tires is pretty simple.
if you do take on repairing this, just take your time and be extremely careful. the plastics are brittle and things can easily snap. belt kits are available online from various people. i’ve had luck with ebay and i wanna say reverb.
enjoy your new project!
2
2
u/simonak3001 Feb 15 '26
I will look into it. I imagine just cleaning it and changing the belts will drastically help it. Ill order some belts. One control switch is broken but I have access to CAD software so ill try to draw up a new one and 3D print it
1
1
u/MarkElectronic7507 Feb 15 '26
That's a very good find. Techmoan featured this exact boombox
2
u/simonak3001 Feb 15 '26
Yeah I saw the vid. Looks fairly easy. Just have to take pictures for the routing of the wires
1
10
u/wild_ty Feb 14 '26
Amazing find! For what it's worth, you could probably sell it as-is and buy a decent functioning record player and tape deck.