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#1
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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. |
#2
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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 LFOD ! |
#3
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Quote:
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. |
#4
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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"
Last edited by KentTeffeteller; 03-05-2023 at 11:26 AM. |
#5
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Quote:
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. |
Audiokarma |
#6
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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? |
#7
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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 |
#8
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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.)
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