GE Trimline record player

[William]

Sometime last winter I was in Grand Rapids for an appointment and while I was killing some time, I went into a new antique store that I had never been in before. It is a large store with three floors, and they actually had a few vintage electronic things, mostly floor radios and a few table radios too. As I was wondering around in the basement I stumbled, literally, over this GE trimline not so portable stereo hiding in a back corner. I think it's a model 600 but so far have not found any numbers to indicate this. This looks interesting I thought, but no price so I was not sure just how interesting it would be. I asked one of the workers about the price and they had no clue. They suggested I take it upstairs to the cashier, also the owner, and ask him. I picked it up, it weighs between 40-50 pounds and upstairs I went. Long story short, it was worth the lug. He said give me ten bucks for it and it's yours. I handed him ten bucks and out the door I went. Until last week it has been sitting on the basement floor in the storage room.

Last week I decided to straighten up the storage room so I could dig out the Christmas decorations. The first thing I grabbed was the GE and I moved it to the shop. I did clean up the storage room but kept thinking about the GE stereo. I wonder if it works?? Up on the bench it went, I hooked it up to the Variac and slowly brought up the voltage. The dial light came on and then I heard some static on the radio. Yep, it works. I hooked up an antenna for better reception and was very impressed with the radio performance and the way it sounds. But wait, why does the RH channel have bass, but the LH does not. I monkey with the balance control thinking that might be dirty, it is but that is not the problem. What the heck! I switch sides with the speakers, and I now have bass on the LH side but not the RH side. This must be a speaker issue, so I open up the speaker enclosure and found I only have one woofer. Someone, somewhere, removed the LH woofer. These woofers are nothing special. EIA code 137, Chicago Telephone, small magnet, just nothing special. Grrr.... Now I need to find a 10" woofer that will be compatible with this GE Trimline, it's too nice not to restore.

Bill

[Hi-Fi-Mogul]

That's a nice score, Bill !

At least you have the one woofer to measure the
impedance on, to find a match.

Do you think its a coaxial speaker with a tweeter
in front ? Or maybe a good ole whizzer cone, ha !

I've heard these G.E. Trimlines sound really good.

If you get any info on the chassis #, let me know
and I'll look for the Sams for you.

Ditto the record changer folder, if you need it.

[TC Chris]

OK, now I get it. One woofer is missing and would have covered the tweets x 2 that we see. Odd that somebody would snitch just one.

Chris Campbell

[William]

Yep, the woofers cover the tweeters, or at least one does, which is kind of a good idea to help with space in a small speaker enclosure. The tweeters work great, they produce nice crisp sound.

The chassis is really shoehorned into this thing and will be a royal pain to remove which I'm not looking forward to.

Thank you for the offer of the Sam's Mr. Mogul, I may just take you up on it if I can find the numbers.

Bill

[electra225]

There is not much on ebay in the way of good used, reasonably priced 10" speakers. I did find a couple that might work.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195498087727?h ... R6T564uhYQ

[William]

Thanks, Greg. The biggest problem is depth. These Philco's have larger magnets than the GE/Chicago telephone speakers. I need to take a reading and find out what kind of ohms mine are. I may contact the seller and see if they would be willing to measure the depth for me.

Bill

[electra225]

Depth and the magnet is why I linked those. All the new ones have real shallow cones and huge magnets. It may be a challenge to find exact speakers. And the price. You may not do better than that.

[TC Chris]

Parts Express always has lots, many inexpensive:

https://www.parts-express.com/GRS-10PR- ... quantity=1

or for $3.00 cheaper, paper cone/foam surround.

https://www.parts-express.com/GRS-10PF- ... quantity=1

More expensive, but square frame;

https://www.parts-express.com/GRS-10SFP ... quantity=1

On sale for $10.78:

https://www.parts-express.com/Titan-10- ... quantity=1

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

Great idea, Chris! I never thought of them.

[TC Chris]

I filled the holes in my little Home-Mark with inexpensive drivers from them. And then mostly forgot until I ran across an old catalog in my magazine pile. They have lots of inexpensive options.

Chris Campbell

[William]

Thanks guys, this helps a lot.

Bill

[Firedome]

At only $11 might be good to get 2 of them so the sound will match?

[hermitcrab]

Parts express has great deals on speakers