Another Curtis Mathes BEAST!

[polaraman]

The 8 track was a cheap model and I did not think it was worth repairing. If it were in working condition I would have left it there. I actually think the set came with a reel to reel tape deck. There are signs that a slide out tape deck of some sort was original to this set. It was probabally replaced with a then modern 8 track. I found this Realistic cassette player at a local thrift store a few weeks ago. It has the connections to hook it up to the radio/audio chassis. The cassette tape deck only cost me $2.00. It is not the greatest but it was CHEAP!


polaraman

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by polaraman

The 8 track was a cheap model and I did not think it was worth repairing. If it were in working condition I would have left it there. I actually think the set came with a reel to reel tape deck. There are signs that a slide out tape deck of some sort was original to this set. It was probabally replaced with a then modern 8 track. I found this Realistic cassette player at a local thrift store a few weeks ago. It has the connections to hook it up to the radio/audio chassis. The cassette tape deck only cost me $2.00. It is not the greatest but it was CHEAP!


polaraman

The Realistic brand was marketed by Radio Shack in the '60s and '70s and was fairly good then, not like much of the gear made for RS today. Your deck will play metal (chrome) tape and also has a tape bias selector, so it wasn't just an ordinary recorder and probably was not terribly cheap when it was new. (They are always cheaper at thrift stores such as Goodwill, et al. as you found out.) I once picked up a working stereo cassette deck (trash day find) years ago that had the chrome tape selector, bias adjustments and all...and it worked very well, replacing the cassette deck in my Zenith four-mode integrated stereo (its built-in deck was starting to develop problems such as no record, auto-stop was not working, etc. after 16 years or so). The external deck worked great the rest of the time I had the Zenith stereo (maybe a year or so). Got rid of both units when I moved in 1999 and bought a newer stereo (Aiwa 200-total-watt bookshelf digital system with 3CD changer, digital tuner, surround sound, etc.), but don't you know it, after seven years one of the cassette decks in the newer unit went bad; oh well, I see that a lot of the newer mini stereo systems only have one cassette deck anyway, so I don't feel so bad now about losing the playback-only deck in mine. The other deck, which is record and playback, still works; I don't record on cassettes very often anymore as most of the cassettes I have are pre-recorded. I'm in the process of burning a lot of those cassettes to CDs anyway, so the deck is mostly used for playback only. If I ever wanted two decks in my stereo again I could always patch in a Panasonic RX-FS400 boom box, which was a trash find here about a month or so ago. The only thing wrong with that unit, believe it or not, was that the cover for the battery compartment was missing (and the old batteries, which were still in the player when I found it, had leaked, making a mess on the terminals--but no corrosion); it even had the AC cord still attached when I found it. Just goes to show that not everything one finds in the trash is junk.

The stuff folks find in thrift stores isn't so bad either, as you found out. In the '70s there was a thrift store on the next street over from where I lived at the time; I picked up some interesting stuff there, and at reasonable prices, such as a Zenith Royal 500 eight-transistor portable radio. I don't remember how much I paid for it, but it couldn't have been more than a couple bucks; later, in the eighties, I got a Zenith Royal 820 AM/FM portable for $3 at a thrift store near my old neighborhood. Both radios worked, and well, but unfortunately I don't have either set anymore.


Probably should have kept the external deck I used with my Zenith stereo as it was a fairly good unit. They don't make them like that anymore; that includes decks like your $2 thrift-store Radio Shack find. I would guess that deck went for maybe $60-$70 or so when new perhaps 20-25 years ago.

The Craig brand of audio gear, radios and so on, popular in the '60s and early '70s, was cheap stuff from Japan, and generally not worth repairing once it got a few years of use. As I said in my answer to your last post before this one, I don't know what was wrong with the 8-track deck that came with your CM entertainment center, but from your description it must have been plenty messed up--as I said, possibly transport problems, maybe troubles with the preamp/amp system...anything. (Was the set hit by lightning at any time? This could have fried the amplifier board in no time flat; same if there was a power surge from a defective regulator transistor or a power-line surge.) However, with a cheap unit like the Craig 8-track, you were wise not to try to repair it or have it fixed, as it likely would have cost more than the whole deck was worth just to have it looked at, let alone repaired. Eight-track systems are out of date anyway. Unless you have a collection of 8-track tapes you still listen to once in a while, it's probably better to simply replace the 8-track player with a cassette deck (as you did) or, better yet in this day and age, a CD player. Have you considered having your 8-track tapes transferred to cassettes or CDs? Just a thought. If you have an audio editing program such as Audacity you can transfer just about any kind of tape to or from any other format. I have the Audacity editor and use it to burn my cassettes to CDs, although it is a rather time-consuming job as it entails three steps: recording the cassette to the computer's hard drive, exporting the audio file as mp3 format, then burning the mp3 file onto the CD. Takes me about 90 minutes to two hours or so to transfer one cassette, so I ordinarily don't do more than one in any given evening. I generally just transfer my cassettes to the computer, burn them to CDs as a backup, and listen to the cassettes through my computer using Winamp (and my stereo system as the amplifier). Sounds wonderful, even with the computer's so-so stereo sound card and using Sony MDR-24 stereo headphones (as I use when listening after midnight or so, when everyone else in the apartment building has gone to bed); Winamp doesn't sound half bad through the system's own three-way speaker systems (with powered subwoofers) either, which I use during the day.

The only problem I have right now is running out of space on my hard disk. My computer has a 20GB hard drive, of which about 15GB is used to store other programs and the computer's own operating system; that leaves me with only about 5GB for storage.Much of that is being used for other purposes such as information storage for my word processor. Guess I'll have to get another external hard disk eventually if I want to keep most or all of my cassettes in the system (I have perhaps 80 or more cassettes in my collection to date). A new computer with Windows XP and all the bells and whistles wouldn't hurt either, but I can't afford it right now, which is why I'm still using--gasp!--Windows 98SE--some years after Microsoft discontinued support for it and perhaps five or so years since the operating system was new and top-of-the-line. Gee, being an audiophile in the 21st century isn't what it used to be!

[polaraman]

I pulled the AMP chassis tonight. Not too much to replace in this chassis. It has 4 6BQ5, 1 12AX7 and 1 5U4GB. The sound has 12" speakers and a horn on each side. I will take pictures of them later. There is a 10 November 1964 date stamped on the power transformer.


polaraman

[Charlie]

The Matsushita oil-filled capacitors are common in the CM's. My color CM didn't have them, but my B&W CM was loaded with them... mainly the .047's. They are not lytics. Simply replace with new orange drops.

Oddly, I found every one of the oil caps to test right on the money when I pulled them out. Not a single one was off spec.

[fujifrontier]

i want to see it