show your newest vintage electronic entry !

i wonder what you guys carry home in vintage electronics - is it the tiny Walkman, you smuggle in the pocket past the argus-eyes of your wifey ? is it the huge boombox you bring home ? an old tv-game ? hifi-equipment ? a guitar-amp ?
show it here !

my newest entry is a ca. 1962 Telefunken turntable, wich is actually a proper Thorens (combination of TD135 and 187) in nearly perfect original condition. pickup is a Shure M44:



the „telephone-dial“ to the right is to select disc-size for automatic start…

 

Here is my one, a wind up gramophone with the horn speaker section in the opening below.

 

I had to think for a long time before I remembered this (the cassette deck at the bottom).

It appeared on the "junk" table at the Amateur Radio Club I belong to so
I suggested a price that both I and they were happy with. I tried it last weekend and apart from the meter light it all works.

@autoreverser 's comment about sneaking things in amused me as the deck stayed in my car for about a fortnight and then after testing when my wife was at work went to my storage unit (which costs more per week than I paid for the deck).

It isn't the cost of buying things but where to put them which is the problem here. I also seem to have an ever growing list of items needing repair. My Sharp VZ2500, an 8 track deck, a Weltron 2001. I know there are more like a couple of Boomboxes. More difficult to store away than a Walkman. That reminds me there is a WM25 which has been sat by the side of the Monitor here for years waiting for a new headphone jack.

p.s. I do not need a Panasonic Woodgrain Amplifier.
I do not need a Panasonic Woodgrain Amplifier.

 

great story, longman - maybe now you need a Panasonic Woodgrain Amplifier

 

just got this world-time table-clock, as i like the design. a leaking old battery had destroyed the battery-compartement and the movement was stuck, so i took the whole thing apart, cleaned, greased and oiled the movement and connected the battery directly - works fine - well, most probably i will disconnect the battery again, because there‘s a little motor winding up the thingy all few minutes, wich is quite annoying. anyway, i like the clock, even if not working. it can watch my left speaker and time is not running out when i chill with some good tunes

 

Picked this up last Sunday, a Pioneer PL-518X. Was near top of the line for Pioneer in its day. This one was in surprising good condition. It was wrapped in clingfilm from wherever the last owner was storing it so very clean. Top of the perspex cover needs a bit of a polish but no bad scratches to get out. Can't find any marking or names on the cartridge so probably not a good one and I'll do some research on a suitable replacement. Missing feet as these are well known to disintegrate, which mine have done!

 

That mechanism looks like one that was in a wall clock my Mother bought me out of one her magazines back in the early 1970s. As you describe it used to go "Neeeeeeeeeeeah" Clunk every five minutes as it rewound itself.

Is the red airplane on your clock the "second hand" ?

If you wanted to you could change the mechanism for a more modern, quieter one.
Last year I bought the kitsch clock pictured below and changed the mechanism for a new one as the original was unreliable.

Something to watch out for is that different manufacturers seem to use different sized shafts for the hands. The original hands wouldn't fit the new mechanism so I bought some replacements. The first set I got were a bit too big so I bought a different set. They were only about £2.50 a set including postage so in total the whole project cost less than £20 + my time. I even got around to hanging the clock on the wall above my desk here.

Finally, your clock reminds me of these "Sony" clocks that keep coming up if you search for "Tuning Fork Clock" (another type of mechanism that predates quartz).
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294816073251?hash=item44a4684623:g:ra4AAOSwY9RiDFXt

 

It may be cheap, but 0.07% WRMS for a basic unit is not bad, and as a playback machine these cheap Panasonics/Technics were absolutely on par with many more expensive machines. I have a later model with power-assisted buttons.

Since the thread is entitled "electronic" not just "audio", here is mine: an SVHS-C camcorder. It is portable (video to go, yay!) and it has fancy audio: it is one of the few Compact VHS machines with Hi-Fi audio capability.

 

Picked this up last week.
Been looking for a decent D6 for a few years now. Auditioned a few but they had issues. This one is cosmetically compromised perhaps but functionally it's perfect and sounds great after cleaning the tape path and tweaking the azimuth.
Sounds so good I ended up listening to all 3 Nick Drake albums on it back to back! Breaking it in gently, lol.

 

I think I have half one of those JVC camcorders. A UK company was using the deck for a completely different application (probably Avionics) so they were buying the camcorders and removing the deck and main board. Consequently a Surplus Electronics retailer turned up at a Ham Radio Rally with about twenty of them. For about £50 you got the case with the lens / CCD part, the viewfinder, and some instructions on how to connect the remaining parts to use as a video camera and monitor.

A friend, who was very knowledgeable in electronics was enthusing about the color LCD viewfinder. Back then most camcorders still used Black and White CRTs, or if you were really lucky a color indextron CRT. The JVC might have been one of the very first camcorders to use an LCD viewfinder.

Regarding Mini DV we actually bought a Sharp Hi8 camcorder in 1998. That cost us £550, when the cheapest Mini DV ones were about £1000.
These were two alternatives in the 1998 Argos catalogue. The JVC Mini-DV was the only one in the catalogue.

 

This is an ad from B&H advertisement in Popular Photography, March 1999. The AG-EZ1 looks funky! BTW, "AG" prefix indicates professional camera in Panasonic's parlance. It seems that MiniDV did not become commonplace among regular consumers until early 2000s.




This is what I am thinking of buying... GR-DVL9000. They are available on eBay, but really, I don't need it 1/3-inch CCD, F1.2 lens, humongous 4-inch flip-out screen (the professional DVX100 had 3.5-inch screen), progressive-scan mode (!) in 1999. Ahead of its time. But looks as boring as a Kodak Instamatic. Which is why I like it.



Price in 1999:



Ok, back to the regular programming

 

Time for an infomercial
Both of my JVC Mini DV camcorders developed tape loading faults "eject the tape and reload it" despite them having very little and careful use. In fact the faults developed when they weren't being used. I had to buy another in order to be able to play back my MiniDV tapes.
In contrast, apart from the battery, my older Sharp Hi8 still works fine.

 

today got a different (old original chassis) for my Thorens:

 

Right. I got one off ebay (will make a photo later), which was advertised as working only to find that the tape mech goes into safeguard mode when a tape is inserted. My 2007 Canon and 2006 Panasonic work so far (fingers crossed).

 

Well, I got one No battery pack, no power adapter, but I have a matching power adapter from another recently bought JVC camcorder. 35 bucks, and it works! What do you know. 4-inch screen is as large as on a Kodak Super 8 camera announced in 2016 that has never happened (the Kodak camera photo is, obviously, not mine).

Now got to make a video with it, and about it!

 

I made up a new headphone cable exclusively for use with the WM-D6.
After trying a few combinations of OFC, UPOCC, SPC, I decided on an all-SPUPOCC configuration to make the D6 really sing with my Fiio E12 and Sennheiser HD-565's which is now my preferred headphone/amp setup for this particular Walkman.
I have the HD-600's and HD-650's which are marvellous headphones in their own right but the 565's have a 'fun factor' which is particularly suited to (amplified) Walkman outputs and are also a little bit easier to drive at 150 ohm.
This cable combination has been such a revelation that I'll be experimenting with it in conjunction with my Audeze LCD2's and Chord Mojo for a hi-rez digital listening setup...

 

Is it possible to objectively measure/show the difference in output of different cables? I’m truly interested, and meanwhile @Valentin restored several Walkmans for me, some recapped on my request. I’m willing to send them for tests.

 

i've allways been a fan of the D-6. got one ages ago from honored member @jazzrat but was so stupid to swap it for something - well, sh*t happens...

 

I don’t own a D6 either, but I would still be interested to acquire a dedicated cable that would make the restored Walkmans/men sound best. My D6C with first generation head for instance