Was doing my wed dumpster dive and came across this antique. Didn't have a chance to power it and see if it's working. But looks interesting and looks like some variation might have had an 8 track in the bottom left corner. Also interesting is the built in Dual turntable. Think it's worth saving?
So nice, and with four channel aux! That is a very odd tuner, how do the FM presets work on there? The Dual might clean up nicely and make a good stand alone, winter woodworking project.
Thanks, I pulled it back and powered it up. AM/FM works and dials light, interesting that only the AM or FM dials light depending on what is switched. The radio presets are mechanical, I suspect similar in design to those in car radios of the period. Now for the bad news, the turntable is non functional. The belt is likely broken due to age which can be replaced but in this case I couldn't figure out how to easily pull the platter to get a look at the mechanism. I've come across other Dual turntables that didn't release the platter easily, I think I have one on my bench that I pulled from the dumpster that was hacked up by the previous owner trying to get it apart. I'm not familiar with this model though and didn't google up a pull apart. The other thing was the Start/Stop level is seized, lifting up the arm and bringing it over the platter didn't cause anything to happen and now I forget if I tried spinning the platter and moving the arm at the same time to see if I could trigger an end of record action. The radio however did work. I talked myself out of it because I really don't have the space for more big things!
It's probably caked in concrete grease. I don't remember how hard it is to remove Dual Platters, maybe I'll pull one down later if I had out back. I have a couple of cool BICs with the clear bottoms that get the platter death grip and I've tried several internet solutions like penetrating fluid, torch, etc. but so far I've had no luck. It's always good to have one turntable that can do 78s. You'll find a random 78 some day and wish you had something to play it on.
Not sure what the trick was, I forget, been doing that a lot lately! Like where I set my glasses down.. it was tempting but the lack of 'warehouse' space at home was the deciding factor! I do have an old Dual CS5000 that I picked up for that very reason and as luck would have it I came across 4 books of interesting old 78s the other day.
Pulled this from the bin today. A Pioneer SX-P520. Didn't come in with speakers which is too bad as the photos of complete units looked interesting. I hooked them up to a pair of Sound Dynamics R55's instead and this little rig sounds pretty good. Tuner is quite sensitive for being hooked up to a pair of rabbit ears in the basement. Bad news is the cassette decks don't work, I suspect the belts have stretched as I did pull the cover to inspect the cassette and CD drives and though there are belts I bet they are bad. Just a matter of stripping it all down at some point. The CD also does not seem to want to read disks, the mechanism is pretty sealed up so it's going to require a major strip down to get to the lens to clean. I used to have a CD cleaning disk though honestly most of the time it didn't really do anything while a strip down and gentle brush with a very soft fine lens brush tended to work better. It's the same type of 6 disk caddy system as found in the home units, I have one of those and I kind of like it so that's why I thought I'd rescue this one. In a worse case scenario the Tuner/Amp unit is separate from the cassette/CD so it could be run on it's own. If that's the case I might pair it up with a small pair of Totem bookshelf speakers I have floating around and make a small mini system for somewhere.
