REP: Pioneer RT-1020H rec leds

Today I've decided to open this unit to try to access the rec leds to replace both.

All we know that leds last lot of time, but with +30 years they aren't so bright and the red color is dark. As I had bought five 5 mm. red leds and used only one, I wanted to replace the old ones with these transparent brand new red leds.

Watching the deck I thought that easiest way yo access the leds was to open the bottom front panel. To do that, it was necesary to pull out all the knobs. My first problem was with the smalest ones, the vertical switches for REC, PLAY, METERS and MONITOR. The original owner had glued them to the switchs, so I decided to use some contact cleaner and use... the force, but carefully for not to make any mark.

After some seconds of uncertainty, I was able to remove them:

The switches were full of dry glue:

After that, the four screws of the bottom front panel can be unscrewed. I noticed that the upper screws were longer than the bottom ones. Now I can pull off the bottom front panel.

Although I even unscrewed all screws from the rectangular black panel, it was very hard to pull it out. On the other side there were lot of wires and a big capacitor with the wires too short, so I decided to open the backside of the deck to try to access the leds from the back, but before do it, I measured the voltage in the VU meters lamps for a future replacement because they light just a few. They are 5V AC.

After removing the back panel of the deck, I unscrewed the small boards where are the leds, each one in a very small board as can be watched in the next pic:

Good moment to clean the fuses with some contact cleaner. The right ones are used for the VU meters lamps.

There's no too much space to use the iron rinner. It would be easier to do it from the front panel, but as I said before, I didn't want to pull it off because the big capacitor that is shown in the pics, so... patiente and good pulse.

After several times where leds fell inside, I was able to get them in the correct place:

The new ones are transparent but they light in a bright red color. After testing them using a small battery to be sure that they were correctly placed in the board, I screwed both boards again:

This picture was taken from the front side of the deck to show if they were correctly put in their original places.

Now this is the look of the front side with the new leds. First pic in play mode and the second in rec mode:

They now look pretty and always know when I'm in recording mode. Sometime ago I thought I was recording and had the rec switches off, but the leds seemed to be lighting due to the direct light of the sun. This won't ever occur with these transparent leds.