Another project...

[mahc 10+ year member]

I'm not going to work on my car till spring time unless I have some down time and bring most of my tools at my work place so to kill some time this winter, I've picked up a nice vintage Rotel integrated monster for 300 cad locally last week. For that price, I got the matching tuner, 3 way speakers also by Rotel, a very nice Marantz turntable and an old equalizer made in Japan from a unknown brand.

Got it from the original owner who bought it new in 1979 so of course he had to tell me his whole life story.

Now the bad. First: the guy was a heavy smoker so opening the boxes triggered the ptsd of my PC repair days. I'm gonna have to spray a whole bottle of contact cleaner into that thing. Needles work but no lights.

Also I have no sound out of the left side. I'll clean it up, test the fuses and go from there.

My whole basement smells like an ashtray.

From the outside it looks like plastic but it isn't. Hand assembled laminated wood.

I can't see shit!

Click to read more...

 

[mahc 10+ year member]

The left channel is back in business. The sound mode selector was the culprit. All switches and potentiometers are now working perfectly except the input selector distorts a bit when used. Since I don't have to take it to my tech; I will probably put in new bulbs and flip it as-is. No restomods. I'll keep on cleaning it as much as I can for now.

 

[Firewalker]

My dad refurbishes old radios from the '30s through the early '60s. The work he does is unreal doesn't matter if they are bakelite or wood or w/e they are made out of he brings them back to new. He has a few thousand different tubes and probably a few hundred other parts. I know he has one that is worth a few K and he gave me one a couple years ago he re-did that would go for a pretty penny as well. That old stuff always sounds crystal clear as well when they have the right parts put back in. Refurbished a few old stereos like the one you are working on. Quality is always so much better. I so regret selling our complete Technics setup that we had and bought back in '79 or '80. Stuff was still sounding great but had to sell it to pay bills one summer. It sucked to say the least. Nicely done!

 

[mahc 10+ year member]

My dad refurbishes old radios from the '30s through the early '60s. The work he does is unreal doesn't matter if they are bakelite or wood or w/e they are made out of he brings them back to new. He has a few thousand different tubes and probably a few hundred other parts. I know he has one that is worth a few K and he gave me one a couple years ago he re-did that would go for a pretty penny as well. That old stuff always sounds crystal clear as well when they have the right parts put back in. Refurbished a few old stereos like the one you are working on. Quality is always so much better. I so regret selling our complete Technics setup that we had and bought back in '79 or '80. Stuff was still sounding great but had to sell it to pay bills one summer. It ****** to say the least. Nicely done!

I grew up with a complete Akai system with Technics speakers. We slowly part it all out through the years and I really wish we didn't.

These machines absolutely deserve to be around another 40 years. They sound fantastic!!

 

[Firewalker]

We had a set of 12" Technics Tower speakers holy shit were those things LOUD. I gave them away when I moved from Illinois to Wisconsin back in 2001. I kick myself ever day for doing that as now I can't touch them for less then 1K in shitty condition.

We also had a 12 foot diameter Wineguard Sat Dish in our backyard . We put that in 1987 and it is still there on old property. I had thousands of channels at a push of a button. Back feeds galore you name it. Was always funny watching the Katie Curic cuss people out during commercial then come back with "in today's news" lol.

 

[Slo_Ride 5,000+ posts]

Wrong section

 

[mahc 10+ year member]

We had a set of 12" Technics Tower speakers holy shit were those things LOUD. I gave them away when I moved from Illinois to Wisconsin back in 2001. I kick myself ever day for doing that as now I can't touch them for less then 1K in shitty condition.

We also had a 12 foot diameter Wineguard Sat Dish in our backyard . We put that in 1987 and it is still there on old property. I had thousands of channels at a push of a button. Back feeds galore you name it. Was always funny watching the Katie Curic cuss people out during commercial then come back with "in today's news" lol.

Big *** sat dish were not common here. You'd only see them on sports bars mostly. That must have been cool af.

 

[Firewalker]

I know the owners of our old house they are old friends of ours. It just sits there I have been seriously thinking of bringing my snowmobile trailer down there and bringing it back up here to have it back in operation as it had C Band and KU Band.I pretty much had HD signals back in the '90s it was great. Signal was awesome yeah not 4k or 2k but compared to everyone else we knew and my friends it was crystal clear. Miss that whole setup and if I ever win the lottery I'm buying that place back,lol and re-doing the setup there with the stereo.

Between a 45" Mitsubishi big screen, that huge surround sound system plus living on a river with a Mariah Speed Boat plus 20 foot pontoon and we owned a couple jet skis plus quad, dirt bike and snowmobiles. I had a blast growing up there. My "social" gatherings were always a big hit since we lived on 3/4 of an acre and being on the river plus the house was 10.5 feet off the ground being in a flood plain.

 

[Slo_Ride 5,000+ posts]

Big *** sat dish were not common here. You'd only see them on sports bars mostly. That must have been cool af.

Really? They were everywhere when I grew up. Hell you still see an old one from time to time.

 

[mahc 10+ year member]

Really? They were everywhere when I grew up. Hell you still see an old one from time to time.

Cable was always bigger then sat around here.

 

[Slo_Ride 5,000+ posts]

Cable was always bigger then sat around here.

That's cause it was way cheaper. Satellite was the shit back in the day. 30 channels with cable. 300 channels with satellite

 

[Firewalker]

300 no try a couple thousand when setup the way we had ours.

 

[Slo_Ride 5,000+ posts]

300 no try a couple thousand when setup the way we had ours.

Lol, I just went 30 vs 300. I honestly can't remember how many channels we had.

 

[Firewalker]

We had at least a couple thousand. The amount of channels from all over the world was insane. I had back feeds galore. Remember watching the OJ chase on a back feed and all the reporters cussing like crazy and saying all kinds of stuff that well they wouldn't say live,lol. Katie Curic was among the biggest ones of cussing when not live. We used to crack up laughing at how she portrayed herself to the world but if the world only knew what she said off-air,lol.

 

[mahc 10+ year member]

Deluxe ski cottages had them.

That's cause it was way cheaper. Satellite was the shit back in the day. 30 channels with cable. 300 channels with satellite

I admit that must have been really cool back then but we never really watched tv programs. We used the tv for nintendo and vhs mostly. We were malls/rental stores creatures.