You will remember I put this up for sale last week!! Well............. No Longer Is It The: Los Blancos Elephantes! I have been tinkering with it & thanks to advice from a couple of Facebook stereo groups, I found a fractured wire that feeds the clock - looked connected but inside the insulation, the fracture was complete so no power which I am told it needs to power up! After a battle with very brittle wiring & f**king Mickey Mouse solder (where can I buy some old school 80's or 90's solder??) It powered up & it needs belts but it works now & I am keeping it unless I change my mind but that's unlikely (Just being honest) There will be a follow up thread to the one I an writing on the main forum soonish!! These are quite a machine with lots of bells & whistles - Lets see if I can rebelt it & fix the power switch!! I could end up with a fully working elephant!
Great! And fixing On button is pretty easy, with a piece of plasticard and styrene (Tamiya, etc) glue
Yah, you don't want to get rid of that one, just a beast. I know your style seems to swerve towards silver and small buttons but that one is a real gem and lusted after in several continents.
So £85.00 doesn't seem so bad after all!! Are these easy to dismantle? I can see what I need to remove to get the power board & am hopeful I can do this part, but what about the cassette deck? It looks buried deep & a bit scary! Is it easy enough to remove for rebelting? I kind of realised yesterday that I DON'T want to get rid of it after wanting one for SO long! Just doubt my abilities lately what with the recent brain damage events, I can't survive those every time & I err towards being unable to fix these stereo's any longer A sad reality I'm afraid! I am going to try & do this one though, these are new to me & complex no question! Lets see what happens guys Will post any progress & stripdown of course!! Laters
Maybe Jorge will chime in, he just got one and I think he broke the seal. I've never seen one in the flesh before so I can't help you.
Yes, as promised at Boomboxery I will post my photos on Elephant surgery: I made so many that its hard to choose the relevant ones... Those spring-loaded multipins were the worst idea, thankfully not too many of those, and not all of them got bad on mine... Have yet to get my first Aiwa to see what a real pain in the butt feels like, but following @Michelle Knight blog I am not too eager to investigate! Listening to my Elephant right now: sounds just OK but looks like my fav "Welcome to the Machine" song! (and they say you cannot describe architecture thru dance,... I just did!) Amazing piece of technology!!!
not multipins, sorry! there are no pins, just bare wires held by leaf-springs. the worst offenders on mine are here: insert a tiny flat screwdriver before pulling out the wires
just get your hands on one of these models either Sanyo M7790 or the M7790K and attempt to re-belt those as there are very few multi-pin plugs only for the mics and the speakers after that you have to un-screw or on solder stuff to get to the deck
Yeah I noticed the unusual twin antenna wires just push into a strange 2 pin receptacle - I had noticed those other connectors yet......lots of pictures time I guess when I get round to looking at it again! Can I remove the cassette deck easily though?
bear with me,... should upload my resto photos of ON switch tomorrow! I did not take photos of some crucial steps while stripping down its control panel (u-Computer according to the SM), so now have to use CorelDraw to mark the screws one should NOT touch!!! and Yes, once you pull out the mainboard (rec-board per SM), cassette mech is all yours! It has one dreaded amber-coloured gear, but on mine it is still solid!! Miracle???, or (hopefully) just the same color as those crumbling ones in all Philips/Magnavox bboxes!?!?
I have new gear anyway if needed, am worried now about these special screws NOT to remove - I haven't removed anything yet so will keep an eye on this thread for help!!
It is DONE!!! Posted my efforts at Boomboxery here, their site allows for a simple Copy-Paste from its original location: ELEPHANT SURGERY: PHILIPS D8814 RESTORATION I also want to exchange all those crazy bare-wire-multipins for the "real" multipin connectors, will update once/if I get to it
A boom-box with wake-up function? That amazing... I haven't seen such a combination of functions since my Radio Shack Chronosette-256.
What kind of solder were you trying to use. Lead free is awful. Real Solder is still available e.g https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HENKEL-L...801106&hash=item51eac8f0b0:g:adAAAOSw8oFXzuaf For aerospace applications where they need reliability it is mandatory. From what I remember RoHS regulations say it can be used for repairs if the original equipment used it.
Many thanks for this Jorge! - Think I will wait for a wet & windy autumn weekend to tackle this........Mine has the dodgy display issue too but looks like a bit of patience will sort this out! Thanks man
The link was just an example, so if you look around you might be able to find it cheaper, or in a more suitable diameter. The key thing to search for is 60-40. Multicore, is a reputable brand that now seems to have been bought by Loctite. Their leaded solder is on red reels while the lead free stuff is on green ones. If anyone insists on using lead free, like the compny I work for, you really need a higher temperature spldering iron, and much more skill and patience. I keep thinking what my college electronics lecturer Mr Rudd, who would be about 100 now if still alive, and who appeciated a good solder joint would have thought of the lead free stuff. I remember him destructively testing solder joints joints we had made into connectors. If the joint came undone it was "No good - do it again". If the wire snapped it was "Very good - now do it again".
The lead free just refuses to flow or solder & turns the tip of my Antex fine tipped iron a dull tarnished colour only removable with a light sandpaper - I have never seen this before & it's infuriating!!
