A website about turntables, audio gear, vinyl records, and more!
I love vintage audio gear and therefore will never sell my McIntosh MC 2505 amp. Let me explain to you why I’ll never sell it by showing you the specs for the MC 2505 along with the pros and cons that come with owning a vintage McIntosh amplifier.
I recently purchased a Nakamichi CR-1A cassette deck that was listed as is/for parts. This is the second CR-1A deck I’ve bought recently as I was surprised by how well this little two head deck sounds.
The owner stated the tape would not play, nor would it fast forward or rewind. I assumed new belts were needed and ordered a set from Vintage Electronics.
Nakamichi CR-1A decks require two belts. One to operate the main the flywheel and the other to operate the counter. There is also a Nakamichi CR-1 model that, I believe, has an idler tire that operates the rewind and fast forward modes. The CR-1A replaced that model with a plastic gear as you will see in the photos below. If you have a CR-1 and it’s no longer rewinding or fast forwarding, you will need to replace the idler tire as well. It should be very similar to replacing the idler tire on a Nakamichi BX-2 that I also posted here.
I documented how I installed the belts on this new CR-1A to share here. I will start with a step by step explanation of how to install the belts and then post photos below.
Continue reading “How To Replace The Belts In A Nakamachi CR-1A Cassette Deck With Photos!”
Last summer, we snuck away for a family vacation in Gatlinburg, TN. Whenever I’m out of town, I always look at local selling sites for any interesting finds. I found the above turntable on Craigslist and scheduled a time to safely meet with the sellers to buy.
The JVC JL-F50 is a fully automatic, direct drive turntable released in 1977. Personally, I love the overall black and silver look of the turntable and jokingly called it “Darth Vader’s turntable” while it was in my possession.
Continue reading “I Love This JVC JL-F50 Record Player Turntable”
I bought this Sherwood S-7200 receiver while traveling to visit family over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was listed on Facebook market for just $40 because it had a weak left channel. I sent the buyer a note while we were shopping at the local mall and it turned out he lived 5 minutes away so he brought it over to me while the family finished shopping. I snapped this photo in the parking lot after purchasing.
I’ve repaired three of these Sherwood receivers now, all with weak sound output from either the left or right channel and have found a common repair among all three.
First, it’s common for weak sound from a channel in vintage receivers to be repaired by a good Deoxit cleaning on the volume or balance pots. However, in these Sherwood models such as the 7100 and the 7200, you do NOT want to spray Deoxit into the volume pot as it also acts as the power switch. This switch contains plastic which Deoxit will corrode causing the switch to break and be completely inoperable. This is a very common issue with this line of receivers. Instead, shoot a little bit of Faderlube in there to clean.
But even with a cleaning of the pots, you will most likely still have a weak channel. Here is how I repaired…
In short, there are eight 4.7uf/25v capacitors that need to be replaced on the tone board. One of the caps is an axial lead but there’s enough room to plug in a radial cap. The below photo shows the new caps in place. I’ll include another photo with all of them circled as well. The service manual has them listed as 901a, 901b, 902b, 903a, 903b, 904a, 904b with the axial cap listed as 902a.
In the most recent model I repaired, the left channel was weak. Replacing these caps brought both channels back to life. In all three repairs, simply recapping this board fixed the issue.
It’s worth mentioning the solder pads on this board are very close to each other. Be sure to note which pads should not have solder flowed between them, especially when installing the new caps. I accidentally soldered one of the capacitors negative and positive pads together which caused the right channel to then disappear. Not good. Going back over the board, I found the mistake and cleaned it up and now it plays great. So be sure to take your time and be as clean as possible when installing the new components.
One more thing, further research online shows that the old Sanyo transistors on this tone board can eventually cause a loud hiss. Since this tone board isn’t fun to get access to, I went ahead and replaced those transistors with KSC1845s. The photo below shows the new transistors circled in red.
The hardest part of this repair is accessing the tone board. I had to unscrew the bracket holding the two big filter caps to provide for enough spacing to pull the board out and access. Be careful when you’re moving the board and take a lot of photos as it’s common for a little connection wire to break loose somewhere on the board which will cause sound to disappear completely.
I love these little Sherwood receivers and their sound. A lot of people swear by them and enjoy the warm, tube-like sound they provide.
If you find one in the wild that’s priced cheap due to a weak channel, consider picking it up!
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I recently picked up this Pioneer SX-780 receiver from a local record store. I brought her home, hooked her up and she powered on fine but there was no relay click and I couldn’t get any sound to play. Bummer.
I hit up the trusty AudioKarma message boards and found this solution and decided to give it a try.
In short, over the many years these have been operating, the solder joints on the voltage regulator run hot and develop cold/cracked solder joints.
I removed the old solder, cleaned the board, applied fresh solder and everything came back to normal!
Continue reading “Pioneer SX-780 Repair – No Sound, No Relay Click”
We had the pleasure of being interviewed for one of our favorite podcasts, Vinyl Emergency!
We talk with Jim about hobbies, how to juggle those with a day job, how we got into vintage audio repairs, vinyl collecting and more!
You can listen wherever you play your favorite podcasts but we’re including the Spotify link below. Check it out and be sure to subscribe for more great podcasts from Vinyl Emergency!