Bought last week for just £25.00 this was my third SR-8800 in 5 years or so.............they turned up so hopelessly damaged or "Got at" by cowboy repair tech folk that they were left sitting in my spares cupboard with me thinking they really weren't worth the trouble!! Last week's machine though arrived well packed & in pretty much perfect condition & never opened up either which was great to discover! The usual no tape deck problems was the case although unbelievably, the playback deck worked fine :O I wasn't expecting that at all.........radio & line in were also fine after squirting the sliders & pots with Servisol! Now, to the dreaded repair: I am already terrified by these machines, they are built to an excellent standard, however they are complex & very difficult to take apart & removing the main cassette deck without damaging anything is a real nightmare & definitely not for the novice or anyone learning to repair tape decks - Even out of the case, the decks belts were goo & it was everywhere :O It took a day for me to completely remove it all........ So, what do we have?.........We have a really nice solid soft touch deck mechanism built to last no question - We have lots of crud & dirt along with seized up eject & autostop metal operating plates/sliders & we have a seized solid motor due to crud stuck to motor shaft In essence, the deck would have been relatively easy for me to repair if it wasn't for these caveats adding themselves to what was already a huge job for me due to the illness etc! I always wanted one of these as man & boy, trouble was, as stated earlier, they are always non functioning - If they were easy to fix then there may well be more minty ones left out there, I doubt there are many who would take one of these on in a hurry I have to say......... So we are now up to yesterday, the goo all gone & the motor opened up cleaned & oiled so it spun freely! Time to work out the belt arrangement as I hadn't a clue..........I had a saved image from the internet a long time ago which told me that one flat & two very small square belts drive the whole ensemble & they are quite tricky to get all of them on at the same time!! Once done & hand operated, all functions seemed to be working so time to get it back into the case.............this didn't actually take too long, it's just getting the mech back underneath the main board - I must say I was sceptical about the chance of it actually working...........remember, I had yet to see & hear one of these working :O I cut my hand & forearm nicely whilst putting it all back together Time to run it up with headphones before going any further - Everything working first time! Wow, just a horrible humming sound when on tape playback mode!! It turned out to be a fractured earth wire from cassette mechanism, I cut it out & made up a new wire & ran it to the chassis metal & the power supply/power amplifier module - Result, complete silence when deck run up Finally, one antenna replaced & one antenna clip replaced before screwing it all back together.......... Result?? Very possibly my favourite stereo, this thing is simply awesome & what a stunning cassette deck this is........stable & a dynamic range rarely found on portable cassette machines!! Love this thing Of course, the beautiful Led bars came to life which I have never seen before working on one of these........ Am tired of typing now so the images & video's can do the talking! Enjoy this stunner, it really is something special
Thanks for the write-up and photos nickecles. These boxes look great with the little tiny buttons and modern layout, but for some reason home stereo components didn't look as cool with these design cues. Even today I see modern equipment with little buttons and I think they would be much nicer with a big-ole-toggle switches. I knew very little about Silver Boomboxes a few weeks ago when I posted one that was for sale locally. I didn't buy it and someone else did shortly after I posted it. They are super rare over here and after seeing yours and the ones deech has been finding, I'm thinking it might be time to start looking for one.
Mister X - These are more a Hi-Fi than boombox, will post some more video's of it soon as I have started to use Maxell Chrome cassettes & they make my Technics 3 head deck for recording come alive Just playing back a tape I just made with the Technics on the silver & the results are nothing short of stunning!! Won't be using TDK CD'ing tapes anymore............
@nickeccles you made an excellent point here, if you can tell the difference between Maxell's XLII and TDK CDing I, it is a Hi-Fi, not a bbox!!! I have yet to get there, all my bboxes sound about the same with any cassette
that's what happens when you buy a decent boombox jorge lol..... great save nick bro, a bit big for me though buddy
Here she is with both decks running in tape copy mode or dubbing - a stupid 80's buzzword Both decks work flawlessly now
