This came in with a loud hum on both speakers, tracked to a leaky electrolytic in the power supply, no outward sign that the capacitor was faulty, I say that because people are quick to say “look for bulging caps”, well they don’t have to bulge to be faulty! So I first tested it on the built in FM radio…only one channel working…great!  Luckily I was able to download the service manual and using a scope work back ...

I didn’t hold out much hope for this one as it had been in a loft for several years and the turntable wasn’t turning. On inspection I found that the rubber suspension on the turntable motor had perished allowing the motor to drop down on it’s mountings, meaning the jockey wheel was no longer in contact with the inside of the platter. Being 50 years old it was no surprise that the required parts were no longer available ...

I bought this for my personal use, good old eBay, would have been good if it actually worked, so I stripped it down and found a leaky 1 Farad capacitor, and that’s all it was, all up and running now, so not so bad after all.

Had this one in apparently not working, well actually it was but none of the bulbs in the display were working, this was down to continuity on one bulb holder, once that was done at least it looked like it was working. Apart from that it had some scratchy pots which were quickly sorted out and is now running on test and sounding very nice.

I had this lovely old tape deck dropped in for repair recently, my customer had recently bought it and had been told it needed belts, this seemed reasonable seeing as it was built around 1980, he even brought the belts for me to fit. But it was soon apparent that he had had a ...

I’ve had a couple of these in for repair over the last year, when working well they’re a pretty good Hi-Fi with a sought after retro vibe.

This one, however, arrived in a pretty poor state, it looked like it had been in someone’s outside shed for the last twenty years, the recessed screw holes in the back of the cabinet were full of debris, not sure what it was though, dirt / spider web or something ...

Another Sharp vertical HiFi in for repair, this one in very clean condition. According to it’s owner it had been bought new 36 years ago and then been stored behind a sofa for many years. All the belts needed replacing, the turntable belt was almost in a liquid state and had to be peeled from the platter, all the others…three on the tape deck and one on the door mechanism had lost their elasticity. New styli were fitted ...

I had this one in for repair recently, according to it’s owner it was bought second hand in the 1980’s and has never gone wrong, if only modern equipment was that well built!

It had gone down on one channel and was brought in with it’s tuner which had no backlight to it’s display. The tuner was an easy place to start, apart from a tricky dismantling job the bulbs behind the display were easy enough to ...

A lovely B&O 1001 turntable from the early 70’s I was working on earlier, the beauty is in it’s simplicity, a motor, a very simple mechanism and a tonearm is all it needs to sound superb. And the brown envelope? It was inside the case and contained a wiring diagram, it had never been opened and it proves that companies like this expect their products to go on for decades, and at some point to be repaired.

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I was brought this old turntable because it was cutting out on one channel, this was cured by replacing the phono leads, an easy enough job, but another fault was that it wasn’t lifting off at the end of the record. Being direct drive there are no mechanics under the platter to accomplish this so everything is done with electronics. To sense when the tonearm is at the end of the record there is a lamp and optical ...