Arcam Alpha 7 CD Player

I had this one in with distorted audio, plus with no disc playing it produced a bad hum through the amp. First thing to do was rule out the amp…all other sources worked perfectly so I was quickly able to rule that out. My first assumption was that the power supply was allowing ripple on to one of the secondary supplies, and on removing the case I was presented with four bulging electrolytics, as it turned out they ...

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The Sony TC-K81 Tape Deck

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 ...

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The Sharp VZ-3150

 

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 ...

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Sharp VZ3000

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 ...

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Pioneer SA-6200

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 ...

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The Bang and Olufsen 1001

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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Aiwa Direct Drive Turntable

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 ...

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Bang and Olufsen Beocentre 2422

I bought this some months ago with a view to restoring it. I was relaxing in the south of France and just looking through some old hi-fi on eBay, this one caught my eye as it was not far from where I live in the uk and it was going very cheap. Supposedly fully working except for needing a cartridge. Normally that wouldn’t be much of a problem, but in the case of B&O only the original cartridge ...

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