Beautiful well made console stereo. Definitely worth restoring. Hope it finds a good home with a person that appreciates quality built electronics from yesteryear
Sitting in front of a Silvertone radio with the family in the mid 50s. I remember the time when the TV station gave the first stereo broadcast feeding one channel to a local radio station one of the first simulcasts. That was the last time we used the Silvertone until I repaired it when I was a teenager. It was AM FM and turntable as I recall it had five vacuum tubes, output was a 6V6GTA.
I was thinking it might be a power switch, a very common problem as well. I just fixed an Onkyo TX-4500 receiver with same symptoms. Power switch comes apart with tabs like the circuit breaker. There are folks like us that know how to repair a part you can't get anymore. Great to see things given new life for someone to enjoy and keep it out of the landfill.
The circuit breaker repair was a good thing to show. I've repaired many like this and most of the time they can be saved with a few bends or lubrication. These Silvertones have a great sound even though they are low wattage units. Great repair! Cheers! 🍻 -Al
I rented a pair of PA speakers from Long&McQuade a few weekends ago - Yorkville Elite units. They had a little "Made in Canada" sticker on them. I spin them around, and "Made in Toronto, ON" on the back. I did a bit of research and yeah - they're -entirely- made in Pickering, ON! Cutting and fabrication of the plywood housings, drivers, PCBs, full assembly, testing and packaging is all in-house. Super cool. They performed really well, too.
I was at a customer's house the other day and the lady had a Moon audio stereo system made in Canada in Quebec. $5,000 it sounded incredible over the moon would be a good way to describe it. no more of this vintage crap for me if I'm going to buy something I'll buy a nice expensive canadian-made amp any day oh wait a minute I've got my Crest audio American amp it sounds bloody awesome too
Aww but the dials on these old consoles look so pretty all lit up! (I have a UK-made Fidelity music centre from the late 70s; one bulb is out and the other 'pulses' faintly when the volume is cranked - I don't think that's a factory feature 😁) Seriously though, it's good to see someone repairing these. We call them 'radiograms' or 'stereograms' and unfortunately there's not a lot of love for them here either due to their bulk and relatively primitive technology (like you say, this was mainly before the Japanese showed up.) Glad that this one didn't end up as a drinks cabinet but lives to play another day for a hopefully appreciative recipient. Those BSR / Garrard decks are bulletproof: I find that if they do run that giving them a bit of 'help' then leaving them to run for a while frees them up quite effectively. I've been lucky and never had to disassemble one that's frozen solid.
What a nice cabinet layout that console has. I love the way the speakers are angled out, rather than forward that way a lot of consoles were set up; the stereo image is far better with this setup. Consoles make excellent TV stands; the TV output can be put through the AUX input for much better sound than most TVs have and the owner could install a Bluetooth adapter as well. Good luck finding a home for it.
Great video, Dave ! A friend of mine, who was a class mate, his dad had one of these Sears Silvertone consoles which also came with a built-in cassette recorder and playback deck ! This brings back memories!
@@12voltvids thats great ! In fact, the cabinet looks almost like I remember it at my friend's house, and if I remember, I had stopped by to visit his mom, and the console is still in the same place as it was all those years ago !, it may still work, but his mom doesn't use it, mostly watches TV !
Dave, I had a chassis out of a tube console in my bedroom when I was a teenager. Yep, right out in the open for a few years, then I built a cabinet for it in woodshop in high school. It had 6BQ5 outputs in push pull, so probably 10 watts per channel. My upgrade was to a Knight KA-55 integrated amp that used 6973 outputs which put out 20 watts per channel, so it was a big power upgrade.
@@12voltvids Mine was missing the adapter for multiplex. It was an add on option most folks did not upgrade to. I am recapping a Fisher 500C which is an all tube FM only tuner with the onboard mpx module.
try working on a craply unit that is this old it would be in pieces and nothing would work they really dont make things like this anymore this is when they cared about making electronics like all vintage audio great job as always have a great weekend and enjoy it well deserved and thank you for sharing this jon
I would definitely have done a Bluetooth/aux conversion on this unit. It's got decent sound and would fit awesomely a period interior. Definitely costs a lot more than the 50 bucks you suggest.
Gotta love the leaky ol blue Mullard caps n Grundig style chassis mount tag strips complete with of course a BSR with a slipping idler n dry motor (which looks much chunkier than the 240V 50Hz version) you said only $50 in CA, I could move that for a minimum of $250-300 in OZ, as for the circuit breaker that wasn't a thing here you got a fuse n that's it then some clown would come along n stick a 10A in n wonder why all the magic smelly smoke got out then n only then you got to see it n clean up the disaster zone left including power transformer in a lot of cases cuz they up'd the secondary fuses too then they whinged at the quote (but usually accepted) for what they caused, oh I miss those days I used to love a heated discussion explaining why n what caused it n cost.
My 4th grade teacher got a new stereo (separate receiver, turntable , speakers) after burglars stole the one she had and for the first few months she had it, it blew fuses left and right. Eventually, she noticed that it started making a thumping noise about 10 minutes into each record before the fuse would blow. She had to either move the speakers or set the low filter to make it behave. At least with consoles (aka. radiograms) that sort of problem is worked out before you get the system.
@@pcno2832 this one is free and I will likely end up dragging it to the dump. I normally wouldn't take something like this. Had someone contact me asking me if I wanted a free stereo for my RU-vid channel they didn't tell me it was a console. I said sure. I stepped out for lunch when I came back it was sitting in front of my garage door and it's like oh crap it's a console.
I desperately want to find a console TV. I saw one a little over a year ago and didn't yet have anywhere to put it, so I passed. I'm really hoping I didn't walk away from the last one in my area. 😢
Hi there Dave, I was wondering about that first side you played in this video the title of the classical track that the school played. it sounds interesting! I'm a fan of classical music, is it possible to get the name of the music and the composer so that I might be able to search for a proper reproduction, as it sounded enlightening Ya still are a good soul my friend in saving a great piece of workmanship. Bless you for all the love you put forth.
Thanks Dave, you're right on about gutting and turning it into a liquor cabinet. i did that to a slide-top unit for my mom before I moved to Texas. Those pin/post panels sure looked odd. Is that why you referred to it a point-to-point connections as opposed to wire wrap pins ? That music on side 2 sounded good. Any idea what tune or composer ? JwgK
Those breakers were always kind of flaky. Didn't help either when there was a fault and the customer kept resetting it over and over. Nice repair on this one.
That's probably why they stopped using circuit breakers is because of the customer pressing the reset button over and over when there was a fault until smoke came out of it
Around 8:00 you say that the amplifier is complementary. Surely you intended to say quasi-complementary? Actually, from the look of things, there are two transformers, one topside, and one underneath that make me think that there is a chance that this thing is transformer coupled. As to the year it was manufactured, my guess is 1967.
The problem with that console was you basically had to get on your hands and knees to operate it as you did. I had an old Monkey Wards console back in the 70's that had a lid and everything was accessible from the top looking down. Much better design.
Well the advantage to this design is that you could say put something like a television on top of the cabinet where is the consoles with the lid that lifted you couldn't put anything on top of them. Trust me I have one that hasn't been that lifts remember I just serviced it that little Phillips. Might be easier to access but it's now Dead space. the last one of these consoles that I had that I service the turntable on a few years ago I gave away to a friend's mother that was moving into an apartment. I think she probably only used the turntable once or twice and then covered it with pictures. And then became too much of a hassle to move everything off of it to even turn the radio on so it never got turned on. When she died I ended up getting the thing back and I gave it to a coworker and he's got it sitting in his garage for when he works out
That’s awesome that you were able to find it a new home. I had to recycle an Emerson console recently that belonged to my mother. I put it on Kijiji here in Ontario for a few dollars with no takers.
@@HoserRocker I put this one up for free and it went right away. Facebook market place. The fella also bought a stack of old 78 opera and classical records i was wanting rid of and now he is bringing me some vintage radios for repair. I gave the silvertone away but I made more from the repair video and it just keeps on earning.
@@hemlocksalazar7791 he generally sticks to the old tube gear. Admittedly though I haven't watched many of his videos or anybody else's for that matter. I don't spend much time watching stuff on RU-vid these days I spend more time creating content than watching it
@@12voltvids I watch it to learn how to fix electronics, same as your channel. Very useful/fun hobby to have tbh and it's cool that people are here teaching others how to do it.
Oh man, point to point wiring. I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. What a difference PCBs make in being able to service stuff. It's all held together into one unit, everything has a specific place with (usually) its own holes, and there are parts designations (well, sometimes). Stuff like this looks like a fire hazard waiting to happen. :-D I know opinions differ on this, but what a relief it would be, to me, to replace ... alllll of _that_ 👋 ... with a nice clean board.
