Webcor portable.

[William]

I have mentioned this before, but once in a while I get a call from one of the local antique dealers asking me to take a look at a record player they have picked up. This was the case about two weeks ago for a Webcor portable stereo model number EP1357-1. The first thing I did after getting it home was give it a bath. Once that was done, I plugged it in and fired it up. Much to my surprise, as this is my first time experiencing this, I had the HUM. But, only in one channel as the other one was dead. Electrolytic replacement time for sure and I needed to figure out why I had one dead channel. I pulled the changer as it sits on top of the amp. It turns out, it's a two tube wonder. There are two 60FX5's, one for each channel. I have never heard of a 60FX5, but were pulled, tested, and were found to be good. As I looked around in the chassis I found the reason for the one dead channel. One of the wires to the RCA female speaker plug was broke off. A quick solder and now I have two channels that HUM. This amp had one electrolytic and four paper/film capacitors. The electrolytic was one of those over grown paper looking caps with lots of wires coming out of one end. It had four stages, 60, 40, 20uf at 150 volts and 75uf at 15 volts. The paper/film caps were the white Goodall looking ones and all four were bulging from both ends. After a total cap replacement, the HUM was gone, so on to the record changer only to discover the tip for the LP side of the needle was missing and the changer had issues too. I flipped the needle to 78, put on a record, manually cycled the changer, and it played. It actually sounded pretty good for what it is, and had lots of volume. Next, the changer. It actually cycled number one record at start up, but would not shut off at the end of the last record, and during cycling the tone arm did not return to the post so when the next record dropped it landed on top of the tone arm. That was not a pretty sight, and not good for any records that you would play. It's a good thing I have a bunch of test records I have kept for testing purposes. The changer problems turned out to be the tone arm height adjustment, and the bottom retainer that attaches to the record over arm. I found that in the bottom of the cabinet. Once the height adjuster was found, it was hidden and very tiny, the retainer installed and adjusted, and a light cleaning and lubrication, the changer works just fine. The needle was ordered from Gary at VM and should arrive any day. Once I have installed the needle I will put on a stack of records and give it a test run. If everything goes well, back to the antique shop it goes and they will try and sell it. The actually have good luck selling portables and get good money for them.

I need to thank the two members that gave me a helping hand by providing Sam's. I would never have found the adjusting screw for the tone arm without the Sam's. And, the schematic for the amp was most helpful too. Thank you, Thank you!

Bill

[electra225]

Perhaps the record landing on the tone arm is why the tip for the LP needle was missing. Nice jobon the rehab and nice job on the thread. A 60FX5 was commonly found in the four-tube Zenith hybrid TV chassis. And, congrats on sorting your first Webcor changer. Was it as bad as you had feared?

[William]

It actually was not too bad, but then I really did not take anything apart. I could do a partial service with out any disassembly, which was really nice. It definitely would not be as easy as a VM to service, as there are far more things to remove to get to the next layer.

Bill