Another boombox came in today .. it's an approximately 45 year old JVC 9475W .. I bought it on the strength of a single photo, the seller said 'it worked a year ago but the tape doesn't work' .. well .. it does sort of work, slightly better after cleaning the sliders for volume and balance. The tape deck is firstly missing its belts, so that would be the first thing to fix. What I do notice is that someone has been inside it before me .. there are LOTS of missing screws, one of the antenna cables doesn't go anywhere, there is some horrible blotchy solder at the top of the board, most of which are dry joints with the wires they were meant to be soldering loose within the solder blobs .. and so on and so forth. I am actually wondering how much of the bodged solder came from the factory and how much was added on later. I still haven't managed to find a service manual - if anyone here has one this would be a great help! This is actually a great looking stereo and a bit of an iconic design. I even have the strap for it (not in the photos) .. the only damage seems to be that one antenna has a broken tip and there's a small piece of plastic broken off near the patch bay on the left. I haven't quite understood how it's meant to switch between aux input and other things .. the selector has only 2 positions - radio and tape - tape switches the machine off, on radio it seems that when you put an input on the line in this takes precedence over the radio (and doesn't mix the two sounds). I put it back together again for now but at some point I'd really like to restore and fix this boombox to fully operating condition as it is really quite a nice device! If anyone has actually taken one of these apart as far as the tape deck I would be interested in knowing how it's done - I managed to take off the top panel but didn't manage to lift the main circuit board (admittedly, I didn't try very hard). Thanks again and enjoy the photos!
I love the 70's heavy metal machines! I think I have both the JVC 9475 and the 717 but they're both in the shop wrapped in shrink wrap. I looked around the usual places but didn't see any manuals for these models. Missing screws is always a bad sign, hopefully you can get it working right, they might not be the biggest but they sound great and have all of the cool features. It looks like the manual might be on the Radio Museum, I've never joined or downloaded but there's pictures of a manual on the entry. These guys have an actual museum in Tokyo, unfortunately I didn't have time to get to see it when I was there. https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/jvc_radio_kassetten_recorder.html#a Peter Vis's write up... https://www.petervis.com/Cassette_Tape_Recorders/jvc-9475/jvc-9475.html
On many Boomboxes the Aux input is only really intended for recording so will only work when the cassette deck is put into record. On some decks you can cheat by firstly not inserting a tape, and then putting an unconnected plug into the microphone REM socket to avoid wearing the motor out. Be aware that doing so will still put pressure on the pinch roller.
