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Hi again-I appreciate everybody's comments. I finally managed to test out the unit on Monday. I brought the radio up slowly on the variac, the AM radio works great. Unfortunately, the FM is DOA. The tuner cables are broken so I had to tune it from the back by spinning the big tuner wheel. I had a bit of a Twilight Zone moment as the first station I was able to pull in was playing big band music from the forties! I was surprised at how good the radio sounded--a large speaker mounted in a big wood cabinet definitely produces some mellow tones.
As far as the phonograph, it turns on and the turntable spins at two different speeds, but not much else happens. I manually placed the tone arm on a 78 record--I could hear the music coming from the needle but not through the speaker. At the end of the record the tone arm just continues to sit on the record and doesnt return. So it looks like I have some work ahead of me.
I dont know if the changer is Voice of Music or not. The only info I could find was that some parts had VM Corp 1594 and VM Corp 1635 on them. I guess the VM could stand for Voice of Music? There was also a V6267 in big letters on one part. The tone arm has a sticker that says "Webster electric".
I didnt try the TV as I need to install a new cord as the old one is pretty much unusable. I am not expecting much from it though.
Anyway, although I have some experience repairing old stuff (lots of pinball machines, coke machines, several old Buicks etc) and have done some minor work on my Predicta, I dont have a great deal of experience with old electronics. I have done some circuit board repair so I am at least somewhat familiar with basic electronic concepts/components and soldering etc. I would like to restore the radio but it would be great to get the record player and TV working at some point as well. I dont want to trouble anybody on here with a bunch of dumb beginner questions, so I am hoping somebody could direct me to some websites that might give some basic repair tips for the radio and phonograph. I know the radio and TV will need to be recapped and the bad resistors replaced but beyond that I am not sure what else will be involved. As I mentioned in my first post, I realize working on old TVs can be a bit dangerous if you dont know what you are doing, so I will probably hold off on that for a while. But I am glad to hear 90% of TV repair is easy--it is that other 10% that scares me a bit!
Thanks!
Lars
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