This little guy bowled in as part of the mornings post today! A generic very early 80's player this time sporting the somewhat dubious Binatone Emblem! I must confess I felt sorry for this poor neglected stero & for £5 including postage, I took the plunger & here it is!! Very grubby & encrusted with years of dirt & grime I wondered had I jumped over the gun buying this rather unusual player - Furthermore, after firing it up! Quack Quack Quack Quack Quaaaaack!! I was greeted with virtually no reel movement in rewind, forward was sort of working & play was just like a slug I also noticed that there was no audio getting to the little Pcb nor was there any life from the ubiquitous "Talk Line" feature so I was a bit down in the heart & not warming to the little machine Time to investigate: The belt was an interesting shape & was completely fucked A replacement soon got the tape transport working well in all modes :O An easy enough fix there........... Next, time to attach the "Straw" to a new can of Serviceoil & clean clean clean every switch & the volume sliders with some cotton buds soaked in servisol.......The volume sliders were gunked up & the dirtiest I've seen in a long time & the same with the orange "Talk Line" button linked to an electret microphone at the front! In fact this switch was seized, I just hadn't realised it until looking inside the player! Now, normally I would have just laughed at the very name Binatone, but I saw straight away that this was built in the era when even budget machines had more than half a chance of being quite good or indeed very good - I loved this short couple of years & have fond memories of many generics that were built to last just like this little guy! Time to power up while apart & test him out "All Trumpets!!" Full operation restored & acceptable & balanced stereo sound once again filled my headphones not unlike the day it was opened by it's proud new owner!! Oh, & the "Talk Line" now workred faultlessly too All that was left to do was clean up the various parts of the casing before reassembling the little Binatone & listening to it as it happily worked in all modes just as it should!! A nice little reminder of those golden days - & another true survivor from a now bygone age............ Et Viola:
The horizontal players are always strange looking but in a cool way and the pig nose screws in the front are a nice touch. You always come up with never before seen models, while they might be mid-fi they're still cool to check out. All the Taiwan Models I find around here are a fraction of the quality and you have to shake them to make sure the insides are still around.
You would need a hefty belt to clip that one on. I am sure there would be an AKA of the Binatone in other countries. As far as I know Binatone was only an importer / distributor who had their name applied to their products. Last week I bought a scan of the 1983 Shoppers World catalogue. Shoppers World wasn't a name I was familiar with but it turns out it was a division of Woolworths, who introduced Catalogue Shopping before Argos. http://www.woolworthsmuseum.co.uk/1970s-catalogueshopping.htm In Bristol we just got "21st Century Shopping" where Woolworths tried to move upmarket into the world of Camcorders and LaserDisk players. Something I noticed the the catalogue (which according to the site above shouldn't exist) is that nearly all the electronics goods are "British" brands like Amstrad, Binatone, Bush, Fidelity, Murphy, and Steepletone, with just a few Philips and Sharp products. Maybe the profit margin was higher on the "British" brands. Benkson is another brand that I will always associate with Woolworths. Note the Benkson Kangaroo style Boombox, and the huge top loading Binatone Personal Stereo which strangely doesn't have a catalogue number.
Benkson! lol I remember them well from the 70's The 2 Benksons @ the top I own - Walkman under the WHSmith banner with FM stereo tuner pack & the portable compo bearing the good old Alba badge!! The Binatone Hip-Fi is the same as the Benkson PSC1 unit, The PSC3 Benkson same as the Bush (Item 5) below share the same internals but have different case configurations The Unisef is Orion built - I have the cassette player only version & it's very good indeed for a budget unit! Indeed most of these are all sharing the same decks apart from the rather dated even then Philips - an oversized underspec'd unit
