SONY SVO-5800 Cassette Loading question

[accteams]

Hello
I have a SONY SVO-5800 without the ‘Cassette Compartment Assembly’ as shown on Section 2-6 (page 2-10) of the SVO-5800/5800P Service Manual (Vol.1 1st Edition.

Is it possible to manually Load, Play and Eject a cassette without using the ‘Cassette Compartment Assembly’?
Thank you for any help you may offer.

[aramkolt]

Never heard of anyone doing that, but I would suspect it is not possible mainly because the elevator also provides downward pressure on the tape itself to keep it fixed in place. Without that, the tape can wiggle and wobble during operation and possibly even get kicked off of the reel hubs.

The SVO-9500MD uses roughly the same mechanism as well (but not the same electronics) so that'd probably be a good source machine to get a tape elevator from since those can be had for around $125. A fully working SVO-5800 is worth quite a bit more. Though I see parts SVO-5800's pop up on ebay for around $400, so not sure if it'd be worth more to you to have spares of everything else for that cost difference.

[accteams]

Hello aramkolt

Thank you very much for the prompt and clear reply. Also I hadn't been aware of the term 'tape elevator' so I can search for that too.

I have been searching eBay for listings of parts for the SVO-5800, but without success. Now I will expand to the SVO-9600MD.
A few years ago I saw the ‘Cassette Compartment Assembly’ for SVO-5800 on eBay for $15; but I was too slow to get it.
At that time, I had used the VCO only a few times (picked up from university surplus site) and it seemed to run just fine (for a newbie) although I was having some trouble with the loading & ejecting even then. The VCO maintenance menu showed the unit has only about 20 hours of use.
So, I'd like to keep it out of the trash bin.
regards

[aramkolt]

That machine is probably worth a good $1000+ once it has an elevator if it really only has 20 drum hours, so definitely wouldn't trash it in any case. The few I've seen had between 500 and 1500 hours on them.

Only thing that could make it more valuable is if it has the component output card. They all have the ports on the back, but relatively few have the card that actually allows them to output anything. The "Y" connector there might still output luma (black and white if viewed as composite) since I think that's the same as S-Video's Luma, but I'm not sure. I think of the 4 I've worked on, only one of them had the component card.

You could also grab this one which has been unsold for quite a while, around $235 shipped from Japan and probably great for other spare parts. Mechanism and everything should be the same, power supply might be a little different as it was for 100V instead of 120V: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155689497747 Who knows, the one from Japan might even have that component output card?

[dellsam34]

Keep in mind those are SP machines only, You still need another VCR for low speed tapes which most consumer recorded tapes are.