I think this is more for the d.i.y repair man of boxes..When fixing or serviceing a box,what do you find inside that was a good idea,genious idea,bad idea,or down right stupid idea of a box ??
Example,i'm sorting the rewind and fforward out on my GF999,i find that the little idlers were a stupid,ridiculous idea,i mean,now that these are so old,and if that the idlers tyre is completely shot,what are we supposed to do to repair them to get them working again ?? if they just designed them with belts,we would'nt be struggling like this..also,the stupid hinges on the GF575,777,999 ect..come on now,did they really think that these2 little tiny flimbsy plastic pegs was appropriate as hinges,ridiculous !!
Cant think of any good idea's on a box at the moment..maybe you have found some genious designs inside a box..

i do have one little good point,on the crown sz5100,the cassette belts are so easy to replace,even a 5 year old could do it

im not gonna jump in on this thread G,MAN cos as you probably already know i don,t do the tec side im looking forward to other peoples posts on this though cos it may give me a bit of inside box knowledge

I`m wi ya on that paul lad. Them idlers suck. The soft eject on aiwa`s is dodgy. That string idea is bad. If the string goes, you`ve had it. Tried to fix a 660 once, forget it.

Richard,have you tried fixing a Tpr 990 deck ?? ohhh lovely

I have paul lad. Only got to changing the belts. That`s enough. If them gears are out of sync, forget it. Same deck is on the 968.

In general , the wires in a box are so thin.
Especially the wires from the power supply and the wires to the speakers could have been thicker

BAD IDEA
When radios are assembled and instead of using connectors, they soldiered wires on that are so short you can't remove the needed items to get the components out and you are left to un-soldiering them! That Blows!

GOOD IDEA
Removable Chassis. When all the interior components are mounted to a chassis that comes out in one piece and then you work on it. Like the JVC RC 838.

one stupid thing came to mind, i was fiddling around with my philips AZ8214



my idea was to replace the poor bass speaker (2,5 inch and 3watts or something like that) and the enclosure to that tiny tiny speaker was bolted with (if i dont remember wrong) 19 screws! Damn! Thats a bit over the top...

I never got the speaker replaced, cause it is a 16 ohm one...

My GE 3-6000 has brass pulleys for the tuner string, I thought that was neat. Of course disassembling it was a different story, gotta take the back off to get the front off!(hidden screws)

Bad ideas: slider controls......sorry, they are dumb, because they fail often. All controls should be either knobs or toggles.

Amps located in a corner of the box where they don't get much ventilation (this seems to be common on GE's)

"Logic control" tape switches: they fail often.

Wires dangling free right next to the speaker magnets.

Stiff tape deck springs: Why? All they do is make the keys more likely to snap off.

Speaker mesh grills that are just folded behind the back of the plastic, with a dab of glue holding them.