Classic Hifi Care

The old '90s SPC (silver plastic crap) Aiwa "stereo" in my garage died last week. After disconnecting and setting aside the el-cheapo speakers for re-use, I took particular pleasure in heaving non-functional the main radio/CD section into the trash can with great vigor!

Of course this led to a hole needing to be filled, and deciding against buying something else cheap/used, to save some $ decided to use the SS Maganvox R231 console receiver my late Uncle always had on his basement workbench, connected up to speakers hung from the 1st floor floor joists. I last heard it working about 10 years ago when helping him with some project or other. In his typical DIY fashion, he'd soldered the A/C power cord directly onto the pcb, bypassing the factory Molex plug that had been originally used in the console. (pic 2)

After Dave MM assured me that it'd be safe to bring up "cold-turkey" without using my GR Variac, I hooked it up to the remaining Aiwa SPC speakers and let 'er rip! Even after at least a decade in storage the ol' Maggie didn't disappoint, and after a bit of knob twiddling both channels of FM stereo from WSKG came in just fine. Tunes for working on the cars (last pic) have been restored in fine fashion!

It's hard to kill a Magnavox.

That is a great step Roger, in economy and practicality. Your garage is a busy one and needs a quality unit that can be hung from the rafters to save space

27 years ago I used an R204 (1964 astro 20W SS chassis) in my dad's basement woodshop for several years with bare 6x9 speakers hanging from a shelf. It came on when the lights were switched on and until AFC would start to work, it tuned thru 2-3 FM stations and always required a tweaking. When you turned off the lights, it would still play but start changing stations again on a crowded FM dial before fading out. It needs caps now, last time I fired it up, it hit the wall I believe. Disuse=wake up needed, if caps can even reform.

Astrosonic Magnavox of that late era was "better" in many respects but that slide out chassis connector threw major shade on those advances. I usually hard-wired the phono cart to chassis to get rid of hum that stupid connector caused or will cause later.

Meant to aid in house calls on furniture nobody dare to bring in the shop, it relied on a palnut tool to get the trim off, so it would slide out. Im sure the shop had one somewhere.

I can see why the slide-out would be needed, who'd want to horse these things around for bringing to a shop!
I'm impressed with Maggie's SS of the late '60s and early '70s, not experienced with earlier model Astrosonics.
I'll only use the FM and so far it seems to come in stereo just fine.

I'd thought about looking for the right complete console needing a receiver transplant to put this into, but
it seemed to make more sense to use it as-is as my Uncle did. It's works fine and sounds good even with the
crappy plastic speakers. I just hope it's 50 years of "experience" won;t come back to haunt me as there's no
way I could ever put in new caps or resistors on the well buried PCBs in this thing.
I don't dare put good speakers in the garage due to the volume of dirt & dust generated but they sound fine
for the purpose they have. I always enjoyed welding, body-work, and painting but don't do much any more,
still, I hate to wreck good speakers as messes do get generated and a little '73 Honda m/c and '57 GE range
are needing restored yet.