Classic Hifi Care

Tis the season for us to tinker, fa la la la la, etc, etc.

Got something on the bench? Having a problem that has you scratching your head? Did you have a little electronic victory you would like to share with your forum friends? Have you had an electronic setback and need a friendly shoulder? We are still here, waiting for you to share your project......

Most projects are a sequence of small steps followed by waiting (as you know from your Tolex project). Before I left for the New Year holiday, I glued some veneer layers on my old GE radio-phono. I need to do some more gluing, and clean the chassis, and re-string the dial pointer, and then recap. Now I'm home again and can get back to work.

Chris Campbell

I gotta get after the X202 in the Executive and figure out why I can only get left channel from the Sony dk555 r2r. If I could get that working, I'd feel far better moving forward to the amp.

I did a FULL recap on the r2r and disassembled and cleaned all the switches but no sound...

Have an old (~1970) Sony 250 R to R, kinda BOL model, from my late uncle that needs new heads, now to find some. They sold a ton of them (the Sony-Superscope era) and hoping parts will be available... anyone know where to look?

You can find sony parts all day on Ebay...the only good thing about Sony's is there is a abundance of them for parts...

All except mine, it seems...

OK.... so I'm wasting my time on a POS then?

I'd say if the project is worth it to you, go for it.

I have an old Sony tape recorder I was given. I ought to get it out and see if it still works. It might make parts for yours, Roger.

Firedome wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:01 pm Have an old (~1970) Sony 250 R to R, kinda BOL model, from my late uncle that needs new heads, now to find some. They sold a ton of them (the Sony-Superscope era) and hoping parts will be available... anyone know where to look?

Let me know what you find. I have the three-head model (TC 350) and it has had the heads replaced once. A local hi-fi shop did that long ago, and at the time all they could find were later hyperbolic heads, designed (I think) for later models without pressure pads. Now those are fairly badly worn. It's probably because the hyperbolic shape has less bearing surface for the tape & pressure pads.

Note that you can lap the heads--basically, grind them down to eliminate the groove that the tape wears into the metal poles--if there is enough metal left so the gap does not open up as you lap away. I had contemplated trying that on my old original heads, which I have somewhere. I'll bet somebody has a head-lapping video on YouTube.

Chris Campbell

Firedome wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:57 pm OK.... so I'm wasting my time on a POS then?

Nothing POS about these. They were in a class way above their price level when it came to performance (wow & flutter, freq. response). I took mine to one of those clinics that were offered back in the day, like the old McIntosh Clinics for amps:

http://www.roger-russell.com/clinics.htm

That article notes this: "This was the beginning of the truth about the performance of other brands. It was not unusual to find the actual power output of an amplifier to be one half of what the advertising claimed. Distortion levels were often well off the graph paper which stopped at 7%. " I still have the graph for my Heathkit AA-22, which came very close to meeting Mac specs, unlike almost every other inexpensive amp that was offered up for testing.

In any event, the tape clinic showed my Sony's wow and flutter to be very low, well below specs. Nothing POS about that. Sony is, for the most part, not a high-end brand, but they have long built good-quality products. Every day after work I set off on my hike, 3-1/2 miles that are now in the dark, with a tiny Sony SRF-59 headphone radio running NPR news into my ears:

https://earmark.net/gesr/srf59.htm

It's cheap and cheerful, a good performer that runs forever on one AA battery.

Chris Campbell

My best friend's brother had an identical Sony 250 he got in '69 or '70, and I recall it sounding pretty good playing "In A Gadda Da Vida" through his Dad's Columbia tube console LOL! I'm just looking for a working R to R to play some tapes my uncle had, not a studio-quality machine. He had a NOS "Victory At Sea" 7" tape still in cellophane. I prefer to fix broken stuff not junk it, so will see if heads can be found or fixed. They made a lot of them as they were decent for what they were, not pretending to be a Studer or Berlant Concertone, and they sold at a very reasonable price.

I've got some time this afternoon, so I'm going to go out and dig mine up and see what it is. The thing is massive, I do remember that. I seem to remember at one point that this Sony is like the one we had in high school audio-video department. This one could sure be adopted if someone could use it. I probably never will. I have two other R-R decks that interest me more.

Hello. I have been working on the console in the avatar, a 1959 concert hall. I had the amp and preamp recapped a couple years ago and it died about six or nine months ago. It died with no hum or static present so I thought it was the transformer and just abandoned it.
Earlier in the week I decided to use my new meter and attempt to measure for voltage but when ii plugged it in. The tubes all lit up and rather than dig around the chassis I decided to just continue hooking it all up... and to my surprise it worked ! I replaced two speakers one woofer was boomy or better description would be flubby. This model has a 4x7 oval and two 4" tweeters I replaced one 4x7. When finished it sounded great. I ran it some more today. No issue. I have no idea why it died the first time but its so good its going again.

Wow, that is good news. I think sometimes old electronics just need a break, so they take a nap for a while.

Bill