These little things came about in the late 60’s, a record player that you can take anywhere! They didn’t tell you that you need a great big bag full of 7” singles to play on it, unless you like listening to the same 2 songs repeatedly… some models also had a 2 band radio, just in case you forgot the bag of records!
The machine runs on 2 PP9’s, one for the record player motor, and the other for the radio and amplifier. The record loads into a slot on the top of the machine, and would be very easy to scratch on its way in! Once in place, you press start, and the record gets clamped in the middle, and pushed against 3 rubber rollers at the edges. One of the rubber rollers is driven by the motor.
Stranger still is this record player is a linear tracker! The whole mechanism is rather crude, with lots of spring loaded bits, the tone arm is spring loaded too. It even has auto stop! The tone arm runs on a metal rod with a plastic coating on part of it, and once the tone arm reaches the uncoated part of the rod, this makes a solenoid trigger the auto stop.
I’m not sure on the speed regulation, but as far as I know it’s done by a mechanical governor inside the motor, and I also read that opening up the motor is a bad idea, so I didn’t!
after a bit of research, the cartridge is an Acos GP79, which I’m pretty sure is mono only, although I did see an old listing for a stylus that said it was stereo! It would be nice if it was possible to play stereo records on it, as I only have one mono record, and it’s awful!!!
This particular machine is quite scruffy, but despite that it’s in good order internally, after clearing out the dust and cob webs, fitting a new belt and adding some light lubrication it just works! It’s certainly not something to play your best records on, as they will probably get scratched. Sound quality is ok, not quite on par with the Hacker’s of similar size, but it does have a decent sized elliptical speaker. The radio is based on a Mullard module, and pulls in Radio Caroline surprisingly well.
There's a Bush version of this...
I never knew they existed, let alone see one, quite an amazing thing, even more incredible is that it still works.
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No problem playing stereo vinyl with a mono cart, there is enough vertical compliance that the record won't be damaged.
@lloyd Snap! I have had this on my "To-do shelf" for years. I have never tried it. I was gifted it by some very long term friends of my parents, I remember being on a picnic with them when was very young and being allowed to play the records on it. "Uncle Les" had a Ford Corsair V4 which was very posh back then and a boot full of 45s! All neatly lined up in boxes until I got to them! No radio on mine though...
@cathovisor yes, that’s the Bush Discassette, which has a cassette player built in too. I read somewhere that Rank bought out Discatron, then later in the 70’s released the Bush, and it was a bit of a flop!
@crustytv I was also amazed at how easy it was to get going! Just a perished belt, the rubber wheels are still in good order. I think I saw one on a TV show sometime ago, but other than that I’d not ever seen one.
@irob2345 I might get brave and see what it does with a stereo record! I’m sure there are some scruffy old 45’s under the stairs!
@slidertogrid nice! I saw a black one of those for sale just the other day, I was tempted! I was using the manual for that version, and there is a slight difference between the deck mechanics, yours might use a jockey wheel between the motor and flywheel rather than a belt, but if yours is the same mech as mine then a flat belt from a Sony FH-7 cassette deck fits! I can’t remember what size it is, I’m sure I wrote it down somewhere…
There was also a version called the ‘Tri-combo’ which had a cartridge tape player built in, similar to an 8 track, but not an 8 track, a quick google suggests it was called ‘Playtape’, not one I’ve ever heard of!
I really should do something with mine. It has sat on the shelf for over 10 years. I keep letting other projects queue jump though. Those pesky tellies! I'll make a promise to it to have it done for next year then I can take it on a classic car rally / picnic and annoy everyone! I can get a lot of 45s into the boot of a Rover P5B!
Well, I tried some of my stereo records on it today, and nothing obviously untoward happened! It did however sound horrible!! I hadn’t noticed before with that other record I was using to test it that the speed was miles off! Normally I’d stick my strobe disc in, but it’s too big for this machine so couldn’t do that. So I settled for playing a known song, and also playing the same on my phone, and seeing how far out it was. I had to open up the motor, to see if there was any way of adjusting the speed, turns out you can! The governor contacts have a little access slot, and you can tweak them by turning 2 tiny grub screws.
Before trying that I gave the contacts a clean with a bit of paper soaked in servisol, some black stuff came off, and trying the machine again showed no change to the speed, so I tried tweaking one grub screw, which made it run too fast! Now the problem with this is that you can’t adjust it whilst it’s running, as the grub screw is on the rotating part of the motor! So it’s just tiny adjustments, followed by listening again, until it’s at least acceptable. It took ages, but I had loads of time in my hands anyway, car’s in the garage, and I was also waiting for a call back from some useless estate agents, which still hasn’t happened..
Anyway.. I didn’t show a suitable picture of the internals!
You can see the rubber drive wheels at the sides, and all the radio bits, including the wonky ferrite aerial! It’s mounted on a bit of cardboard, which has deformed. The yellow transformer looking thing on the left is the auto stop solenoid. It’s all a very tight fit in there, and I’m surprised the record doesn’t catch on the speaker!
Adjusting those centrifugal governor takes me back to my teens in the 60s when I used to fix stuff like that for a small radio-TV shop in the adjacent suburb of Canley Heights. Battery portable record players were quite popular (beach parties etc) and I repaired lots of them. Most had a BSR turntable fitted with a swiss-made DC motor. It needed fairly regular tuning if the client was sensitive to pitch (as I am).
Same idea as some early cheaper end cassette players before electronically regulated motors became common. They often had two little disc ceramic capacitors mounted on them to cut out interference from the brushes and the governor.
There was sometimes a little 'pattering noise' breakthrough on playback, slight and in the background. Unfortunately it also recorded the noise when you taped something so when you played it back you had twice the noise which on quiet passages became audible.
Yes I remember that noise well! Some devices had separate motor and amp batteries which mostly solved it.
There’s only one ceramic cap on this motor, and you can still hear some noise, despite it having separate batteries. I did wonder if most of the noise was just mechanical noise, as the motor is bolted onto the main chassis, with not much between it and the chassis, there is a thin layer of rubber inside the outer shell of the motor, and it does have a bit of vibration when it’s running. The speed regulation seems to work well even down to about 6V.
