1960s? Philco-Ford Portable Compact Cassette Player/Recorder
 

Hello everyone, today I went to Goodwill to drop off a modern Stereo System (early 2000s Emerson AM/FM Stereo Cassette recorder and 6-Disc CD Changer unit) and I went inside the Goodwill to look around and I found sitting on the shelf a what I assume to be a late 1960s or early 1970s Philco-Ford portable Compact Cassette Tape Recorder Model TRC - 25BKG that looks to of been made by either Sony or Panasonic (it has all original Rubycon capacitors in it and germanium transistors.)

When I got it home to check it out one of the battery terminals had came loose inside the cabinet so I glued it back into place and resoldered the wire back into place, and installed a new belt and cleaned the heads and the pinch roller, and tried it out with one of my tapes and for some reason the volume has to be turned halfway up to even hear anything.

I don't know if it's a matter of needing to be recapped or what, but considering it has Single-Ended push-pull output (SEPP) and has a 4" oval speaker in the cabinet I would of thought this thing would of been fairly loud but its not.

I need to look up some service data or an owners manual for this unit so I can look up some specs for this unit and see what all this unit would of came supplied with originally (there's a compartment in the back that I think might of housed a microphone inside once, or perhaps a power cord.)

See pictures below.

Thanks for your help.

Sams lists a CLOSE model #TRC25BK. Its in Sams TR45. TR series Sams are
separate books that will have many different models.
First easy thing is to clean the PB/Rec switch. They are usually Alps switches
& quite troublesome. When I worked for Sony I replaced them on I would
guess half of the cassette decks. Lots of symptoms !
After that a recap would probably fix it.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I ordered a Sams TR 45 book on ebay, and it should be here sometime next week.

It seems I'm getting pretty good at identifying the age of some of these old electronics devices because I guessed 1960s as being when this tape recorder was from and sure enough the Sams TR 45 Booklet is from 1968 which would put my tape recorder to around 1967 which is right around when I thought it was from, which is pretty early for compact cassette tape recorders. :thmbsp::D

This is not Sony built most likely. They did little to no OEM for anybody. Japanese built but doesn't look like Sony or Panasonic build. Early generation, but not first. The Norelco/Philips Carry-Corder was introduced to the USA market in 1964-1965. This machine I estimate to be 1968-1970 era that you have. When you get it running well, you can then say "You've Listened To A Ford Lately"

Well I guess what I meant is that it was the earliest compact cassette recorder I've ever owned.

Anyways, I did recap the unit, but then I had a wire come loose on the circuit board on this unit, a red wire, that I can't figure out where it came from.
I assumed it came from an area near where another red wire had attached to the board that was part of the power switch that turns the power on for the amplifier when you hit the play button, but it didn't seem to do anything when I attached it to there.
I looked up the Sam's for this unit and that didn't even show the wires attached to the board and where they went, and the schematic wasn't much help either because as they didn't have the wires labeled with their respective colors.

I did finally figure out where those two red wires went but now I'm not getting any audio out of the unit (no audio playback and its not recording either) which is weird because I never touched any of the audio portions of the circuitry.

Any ideas as to where I might troubleshoot for audio playback and recording issues?

Red wires USUALLY power from the battery pack to the unit.
You know where one end goes so look in Sams to find where it goes.

Zeno

I got the red wires straightened out already, its getting power now to the motor and what not, but the audio related circuitry isn't working now, because I'm not getting any audio playback from the tape when I play it, and I'm not getting any audio when I try to record either (the audio level meter doesn't move when I have it in record mode.)

Are you getting power to the amplifier stages?
Did you re-cap the amplifier stages?

jr

I'm not sure if it is or not because when I hit the play button I don't hear anything out of the speaker not even a hissing noise, even if the volume is turned up full bore.

I know one of the red wires I had to trace out on the schematic went to the battery/record meter, and that one when I reattached it started the meter functioning again for the battery meter portion, but the record meter portion doesn't function or respond when I put the tape player into record mode, which is why I said the playback and record functionality of the unit is dead, besides the no audio playback mentioned above.
The other red wire was for the power switch that is part of the Play/FFW/REW/Rec push button asseembly that supplies the power to the motor (and amplifier I assume) when you push play when you are using batteries, and while that wire when I installed it works the motor it doesn't seem to work the amplifier stage for some reason.

I wonder if where I have the red wire for the "power switch" installed currently, is wired up in a way that it powers the motor but not the motor and amplifier stage?

I did recap the amplifier stage, that's how I got into the mess I'm in now with the broken red wire leads that I had to trace out and repair.