I'm at the point where I have to be much more selective in my acquisitions but I have a job where I tend to run into old stereo equipment all the time. I do look more for personal cassette players and boomboxes because they take up less space but with the exception of a small Pioneer Boombox in a garage years ago, I rarely see good ones. It's not that I don't like home stereo systems, it's where I have enough to be happy but once in a while it's either given to me or sold at a low cost and I can't refuse. When I used to hit up the thrift stores more, they tended to have more boomboxes and personal cassette players and I've found some real gems over the years. I bought a small stack of gear recently and I was refreshing it with my usual treatment of DeOxit, Belts, and a good scrubbing. This Stack was kind of cool, a TEAC A103 Tape Deck, A JVC Plastic Turntable (kinda nice compared to Technics), a really old Harmon Kardon 330B Receiver and a beautiful little Phillips 212 Turntable. I might have turned them back but I saw another Phillips 212 a couple months ago and I really loved the look of it, it's so 1970's in a cool way and I kind of wanted one since seeing it in the flesh and this work out great. I know some of you are saying....Mister X, you hate Phillips ever since your 32" TV blew up 366 days after you got it and the warranty only was good for a year, this was a little different. I expect most of this old gear to need work so I usually buy without checking it out closely. They did tell me the Teac A103 needed a belt but everything else worked. Yes the A103 needs a belt, I didn't want to do it tonight but one of the guys on AudioKarma posted that there's only four screws to get to the belt. Out in the shop it looked like a major job. The Phillips 212 didn't have a plug on the back, luckily it was on the inside and I screwed it back in. It's a weird connector with a flat blade and a vertical blade. I took a couple of hot wires and it seems to work fine, I just need to find the adaptor. These are both going to need belts but it was fun being inside of them and checking out 1970's finest mid-range.
Good article, man... I've caught the used-gear buying bug years ago, when I decided it was time to upgrade my hardware to something less portable. I recently unloaded a bunch of lower-end pieces to Goodwill, but there's some pieces I can't bring myself to give-up so easily... like the desktop stereo w/subwoofer output I bought for a friend's apartment, who since lost the apartment a few years back & just passed-away last-week. Or the all-original mid-60's Motorola cabinet stereo from someone's curb, which I spotted & picked-up just before it rained. And I doubt I'd ever part with my Atari C-240 Video Music visualizer, even if it has an odd glitch since that accidental mistake while using it years ago.
I was just checking out this section of the forum, some times I can't remember my old postings but I love these photos with the melted belts, kind of a normal thing these days. Maybe we need a melted belt contest thread?
Please, don't mention "belt melt"...! I still remember opening the case on a Ampex 2176 I scored for $20.00 at a local resale shop, and seeing what became of the butyl-rubber bands inside. On top of it, the shop that assessed it quoted over $200.00 in work needed! I never touched it again until a few years ago, when I bought a replacement off eBay, and needed the knobs from the old one.
Hey... that's the same model I have in my stack! Aside from contact issues with the slide-style cartridge change head, the only other "fault" I found was the limited range of the pitch adjustments. A few minutes to remove the knobs, and a quick "snip" of that stop-tab along their shafts, and I was satisfied.
What's the deal with the power cord, It's out in the shop but I think it has two blades, one is perpendicular to the other? Does it have a proprietary cord?
Well that's an odd one... and to be honest, I don't recall having such an issue with it. It sounds as if you got ahold of a foreign version, and the cord is proprietary to the country it sold in. Which brings the question: What language are the labels in?
