The Weight of a Walkman

The Signal

The Walkman repair video went up on a Tuesday. By Wednesday morning it had 402 views. I know because I checked. I checked a lot.

I've been trying to figure out why that number mattered so much to me. Four hundred and two is not a lot. It's not even a little — it's somewhere in the middle, which is worse than being nothing because it means you can see the distance. But I keep coming back to what I actually felt when I was making it, which wasn't about the views at all.

I filmed the repair over two days. The first day I got the belt done in twenty minutes and felt like I'd figured something out. The second day I spent three hours on a capacitor that I soldered wrong twice and had to undo and redo. The soldering iron smoke made me cough. I almost stopped recording several times because I thought the whole thing was boring and I was wasting everyone's time.

But I kept going. And the moment it worked — the moment I pressed play and the first track on Side A started without the skipping that had defined the previous thirty-five years of the Walkman's life — I said "there it is" out loud to nobody. And I meant it.

402 views is not why I made the video. 402 views is the number attached to the thing I made when I decided to finish something instead of abandoning it. The two are related in a way I'm still working out.

The next video — the Dreamcast repair — will probably get fewer views. Repainting a Walkman casing is more immediately satisfying than watching someone struggle with a GD-ROM laser for six minutes. But I'm going to make it anyway, because I said I would and because the Dreamcast sitting on my workbench is the most interesting thing in the room right now.

The 402 people who watched — I don't know who you are, but thank you. I hope the next one is worth your time too.

What's Spinning

Currently playing Ghost of Tsushima — slowly, one area at a time, no fast travel. It's the only game I've touched in three weeks and that feels correct.

The Find

A still-sealed copy of R.E.M. — Automatic for the People on cassette, $3 at McKellar's Used Books and Music on 8th Street.

From the Workbench

Dreamcast diagnosis update — GD-ROM drive laser is weak. Replacement ordered from a parts supplier in Japan. Estimated 2–3 weeks.

One Link

An archived interview with a Sony Walkman engineer from 1983. He talks about weight. They spent six weeks getting the weight right.