Magnavox Reel-To-Reel Recorder

[davet753]

mr2r1.jpg

Just picked up a Magnavox 1-TR102M Tape Recorder the other day. It looks to have a stereo output, but records only in mono.

Anybody familiar with these units?

[Eric H]

Is that the actual unit? It's really clean!

[davet753]

Yes. The picture was from the ebay seller, but I got the unit this afternoon. It's very clean! It came from a seller in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, so I guess it might have been owned by someone who once worked for Magnavox. It even has the factory microphone, patch cords, and warranty card with it.

Mechanically, the thing is as noisy as a lawn mower engine with an empty crankcase. I know it needs a full cleaning and re-lube job, but before spending that much time on it I wanted to test play a tape.

After disassembly, I cleaned up the three idler wheels and got it to rewind and FF at the right speed, but it would only play on one of three speeds. The capstan idler wheel is of a rather odd "double jointed" design, and had one of the pivot rods frozen up. I pulled the arm off and soaked it with WD40 until I got it pulled apart. Once it was cleaned up and regreased, I found it plays quite nicely.

Now that I know it works, I'll disassemble the entire mechanical section and clean off the old sticky grease and re-lube everything. I'm hoping that will get things running quietly again. I've also got to figure out something to do about the deteriorated brake pads.

Electronically, the only thing I had to do was clean the track selector switch. It has a really strange sort of selenium rectifier mounted on a heat sink that I definitely want to replace with a new silicon diode. The filter caps are real "heavy duty" jobs for a little solid state amp, and since there isn't any hum I'm going to leave those alone.

I did learn that this machine was not actually made by Magnavox, but sourced from Collaro in England (who Magnavox also bought their record changers from). As I suspected, it will play back tapes in stereo, but will only record in mono. Plus, the built-in amp is only a 1 channel job, even though it has 2 speakers.

All in all, I'm pleased with this tape recorder. I won the auction with a bid of $5.50, so it would be hard not to be happy with this purchase!

[TVTim]

I own a few Akai and Teac decks. Very nice unit you found! Great catch.

[davet753]

Tore it down this afternoon for a complete clean-and-grease. The brake pads on the reels have deteriorated somewhat, but it still stops fairly well. At least everything's running quietly now!

I was pleasantly surprised with the sound quality from the built-in amp. It's monaural sound, but the fidelity is fantastic. I tried out some pre-recorded jazz tapes, and was blown away. After playing for a few hours, I thought I'd hook it up to my Magnavox Astro-Sonic console stereo and see how it sounds in stereo. The tape deck has a jack on the front panel labeled "stereo output", but it's dead. There's no audio at all coming from the output jack

I'll tear back into it later and see if I can figure out what's going on with the stereo output. I would like to find a service manual (or at least a diagram) for this machine.