Nice to have a "Home" again

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SeniorSteve
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Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 651Post SeniorSteve »

I just found out about this site and want to jump in! I'm sad that VintageHiFi never came back, but am looking forward to join in the conversations here. Thank you Greg, and all of the others who helped get this forum online. A little about me, I have 4 consoles and no room in the house. They range from a 1959/60 Zenith SF2560 to a 1963 RCA 3VF446. Both of these have P-P 6BQ5 outputs. My favorite is a 1964/5 Zenith MM2670 with the classic MCM style, and my last one I picked up a couple of weeks ago is a 1965 HH Scott model 2225 in Mediterranean style. It's not my favorite style, but it was only $25.00 and included a very nice Dual changer. There are some other table radios, but that's the extent of my "collection". I'm happy to see many of the names from the other site on here, I think it's great that we now have this outlet for sharing information again!

Steve
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 654Post Firedome »

Nice to see you back SrSteve. And a nice group of consoles there!

That Scott is intriguing, Scott is my most favorite legacy audio company. Do you have a money shot of the control panel? They were definitely a cut above and often just stuck their existing separate components into a high quality cabinet making for some really excellent consoles, and the ancillary components H.H.Scott used like Dual were also typically better than what the average console had. I've recently seen Scott consoles with 342 and 382 receivers in them, really excellent SS mid-late '60s receivers.

Scott went right to Silicon SS and never fooled with Germanium like Fisher and some others did. Yours could even have an awesome Scott 222 tube amp and tube tuner. Imo the 222 series was one of the finest 6BQ5 integrated amps ever made, with huge wound-in-house transformers. Chief Research Engineer Daniel von Recklinghausen And Founder H.H.Scott were true sticklers who insisted on using only top components and when available parts from sub-contractors couldn't meet their specs they'd have Scott do it themselves, even down to the machined from solid aluminum billet knobs on some equipment. Here's a pic of the 382-B in my office, as also used sometimes in their consoles. Some pics of your 1965 Scott console would be welcome!
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 655Post Firedome »

Scott may have used their 200, 222, and 299 series tube amps in pre-1966 consoles, all superb performers, among the best in their power class. I've only seen 1 or 2 Scott consoles that had console-dedicated receivers, usually just one of their component receivers turned to have a N-S axis. Here's a 222-D we have and will never willingly part with. Just look at those trannies...now that is a proper amplifier.
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electra225
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 659Post electra225 »

Welcome aboard, Senior Steve! You have a nice array of consoles. I'm honored that you joined us! :)
A good leader is someone who can tell you where to go, and make you look forward to the trip.

Never allow someone who has done nothing to advise you on anything.
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 670Post William »

Welcome Senior Steve! It's good to have another friend join our little community. Please post as often as you want, and as always we always love photos.

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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 694Post TC Chris »

If you have special insights into the early SS receivers from Scott, please let me know. I've got a 382C that seems to eat MPX chips. It uses a 28V stereo and Perfectune bulb set and that seems to be a lot of power running through a chip. I put heat sins on some of the individual transistors that seemed to run hot.

Chris Campbell
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 705Post SeniorSteve »

The Scott is running pretty good, but the MPX portion of the FM is not up to par. It only goes into stereo on a couple of strong stations, not necessarily the strongest ones. When I picked this up the turntable was glued together with lubricant, you couldn't even push the start/stop lever to either side. I sill have an issue with it as it won't shut off when playing the last record. It's not any linkage, it's that there is something that has too much friction preventing the switch to complete. I did notice that I can feel a slight resistance on the start/stop lever. I had a Dual 1225 back in the 70's and I don't remember any drag on the lever. I'll get back to that later. The receiver is kind of a "combination" of sorts. It has parts from the 342, and 382 receivers. The chassis has been recapped, but FM didn't have any sensitivity at all. The meter was lucky to get just below center, even with an outdoor antenna connected. The rf transistor for FM in the tuner (a FET) was not working as I pulled it and that didn't change the signal level thankfully the transistors are socketed. This chassis was worked on before and I'm sure several times as it looks like the tuner was pulled before. Found a replacement FET amp and now the signal meter works as it should. Here is a picture of the front of the receiver running on a FM stereo station. The original #49 lamp (stereo indicator) was burned out so I just changed it to a LED with a dropping resistor after reusing the original bulb base. I'll leave this thread and start a new one showing the cabinet and insides in the appropriate section. There's much to figure out on the receiver as the schematics were ok, but the pictures were somewhat blurry to work from. I was just happy to get a similar schematic to work from.
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SeniorSteve
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 707Post SeniorSteve »

Chris, on your Scott 382C, what I would do is to ditch the #1819 bulb for the stereo indicator and put in a LED instead. You probably want about 5ma going through the LED so you would add a 4.7 k resistor in series. It really isn't critical here as LED vary as far as brightness goes, you just don't want to burn out the LED, or make it so bright it looks overpowering. On my receiver it worked off of the 6.3 volt dial light circuit so I had to add a smaller resistor, I think I used a 470 ohm. The original lamp was disassembled and the base reused for the LED mounting so if I wanted to go back to the incandescent lamp I can do that, just buy a new bulb.
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TC Chris
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 734Post TC Chris »

My receiver has the twin-bulb "Perfectune" and stereo light combo. They are potted in plastic. The schematic shows 28V for the bulb supply. Seems to me that this much would easily cook the MPX IC. I've got a small collection of defunct MPX ICs....

The PC boards are plug-in devices--Yay for easy service; boo for contact issues. Now we have DeOxit, but when I got it the choices were more limited. It would be nice to revive this cool device.

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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 735Post TC Chris »

SeniorSteve wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 5:06 pm Chris, on your Scott 382C, what I would do is to ditch the #1819 bulb for the stereo indicator and put in a LED instead. You probably want about 5ma going through the LED so you would add a 4.7 k resistor in series. It really isn't critical here as LED vary as far as brightness goes, you just don't want to burn out the LED, or make it so bright it looks overpowering. On my receiver it worked off of the 6.3 volt dial light circuit so I had to add a smaller resistor, I think I used a 470 ohm. The original lamp was disassembled and the base reused for the LED mounting so if I wanted to go back to the incandescent lamp I can do that, just buy a new bulb.
Forgot to add: does the bulb current affect the MPX IC switching? Seems tome that on some of them, if the bulb failed, the MPX would stop switching between mono and stereo.

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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 780Post Firedome »

I believe the Scott console receiver shown on the bench is basically a 342 (first version) with axis rotated 90 degrees.
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 831Post Motorola minion »

Hi Steve,
Good to see another post about a Scott. I have several receivers 344, 344b, 382, 357 as well as some A-25 speakers.

The 344s and 382 use an incandescent lamp for stereo indicator while the 357 lights a red lamp behind the tuning meter. I recall the stereo light did not work consistently in the Stereomaster 344b my parents got new in '67 when I was 4. That receiver had no AM either. We moved 2 more times and got consistently super reception just off a twin-lead dipole hanging behind the tall cabinet. Strong and weak stations were consistently separated and individually clear! The needle on the tuning meter confirmed these strong signals, it sounded good too, so I always though the lamp was burnt out.

When my brother and I were tall enough to reach the shelf the 344b and Dual 1009 with changer spindle were on, we were allowed to play 33 rpm records only. Our sometimes silly 45s :P , normally played on a very tame GE "automatic" in my room. The very idea of a 45 by the Monkees or the Archies though that Scott and Altec-Lansing speakers probably made Mom-Dad shudder, so we thought that NO 45s could be stacked on the Dual, and its 45 rpm one-play adapter was MIA. :o

I had once worked on a seldom-seen HH Scott console in a home, which had a bad transistor. My 357 played great after I recapped it, then lost one channel. Again, it was one of the preamp transistors. Since these were silicon, I had no trouble finding a suitable replacement.

Tube models as Firedome said, the 222 amp and its relatives are wonderful. I still have my grandfather's 222 (by way of my uncle, who ran it all through the 70s via Bozaks - those long gone) that needs a good overhaul at last. I pushed my luck too far using it at a former office to play tons of Deutsch Grammaphone records a coworker brought in. Of course I was using a Dual 1009 TT, but my speakers were in a Zenith Z940 console, 10" woofers/horn tweeters. It sounded amazing at reasonable volume.
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 834Post SeniorSteve »

I thought I had posted to Firedome and now noticed it never posted, I guess I have to be more careful. In my answer to the receiver being an early 342, you are correct, except that this one has both AM and FM - maybe an early 382 version. The schematic is similar to the 382 but has the MPX-10 version board. The issue I'm having is it will produce the pilot signal for the stereo decoder, but not just quite enough on most stations. If the pilot signal increases past a certain level, the pilot signal jumps to what it needs and stereo comes in. It's kind of like the trigger point for switching to stereo is set too high. There are only 2 or 3 stations I can get the light to illuminate, but I have several dozen stations that are at signal level 4 (out of 5). I can get it to go to stereo with my signal generator, but that won't help me much. I ordered a transistor tester to see if one of the transistors on the MPX board has low gain. In the alignment instructions it says to pull a couple of transistors to get the 19khz oscillator to run very close to the pilot signal for best lock in, but those transistors aren't in sockets like some of them on the board. I'd like to put sockets on those transistors, but finding ones that will work is the tricky part. Like I said before, this one has seen some service before so it may take some work to get it just right. Regular FM sounds just great. I did figure out the reason for the 15 second delay on FM when powering up - it goes through the preamp circuitry whereas the other inputs do not. I think the phono would have the same issue as it goes through the preamp as well.
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 835Post SeniorSteve »

TC Chris, I don't know if low current would confuse the MPX IC from switching to stereo, I don't think it will. All I saw in the notes is to adjust the resistor in series with the lamp to prevent the stereo lamp from burning out too often. One way to test would be to remove the lamp and see if you can hear when it switches from mono to stereo, one of the ways is to listen to the background hiss, in stereo it is always more noticeable. If you go with a replacement LED you can have some fin and use a different color. The little plastic indicator on mine was amber so I used a red LED and it worked very well (when it actually goes into stereo).

Oh, and to all that have responded in the thread - Thanks for the support.
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 4374Post felipegeek »

Hi,

I just joined the forum prompted by the post here by SeniorSteve about his Scott 2225. It's the only picture I found on the internet that matched mine. I'd like to learn more about it's operation, likely issues that will need to be fixed and such. I was into car audiophile systems in the 1990s but don't have a lot of experience with prior to mid-1980s home systems other than playing around with them as a teen.

Is it better that I start another thread specifically around the 2225?

Regards,
-felipe
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Re: Nice to have a "Home" again

Post: # 4377Post William »

Felipe! It is always suggested that a new thread is started under the proper header. It makes it much easier to keep track off and find when necessary. Feel free to post away when you are ready.

Bill
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