RCA Victor Model A-108 restoration

The crackling is from dried out ready to short capacitors......you will see neat red glowing plates in the tubes as well..then smoke..but little or no audio output...Antique Radio Forums • View topic - Plans to restore the RCA A-108 console w/ RP-190

 

I'm prepared for that. I easily get sucked into stuff like this. I tend to go in head first.

 

I fired up and had it running for 3 hours or so before I started taking it apart. No smoke, but that's about the only "good" thing haha.

That link is great. I was looking at a replacement cart, but maybe I'll just look into the 2 styli for the cart. The 78 side is missing.

 

Dielectric grease won't remove corrosion. Typically, it is used to help insulate the clean terminals against water and dust.
What we use to remove corrosion and protect the terminals is DeoxIt D5. For gold terminals G5. A knowledgeable electronics repair person wouldn't be without it in the tool kit. I've seen it, in little spray cans, at Radio Shack. Many electronics suppliers may have it. I buy mine through Amazon.

 

Try as I might, the platter will not fully seat. It is engaged when it slides down, but it is noticable wobbly. There's no way it's seated all the way.

Here's a couple pics of the gear down in the turntable. It's the best I could get. The space with no teeth is lined up with the keyway on the shaft of the platter, buy it just won't seat down all the way. What am I missing?








Also noticed the 3 mounts for the motor are broken. The rivets are still there but the plastic spacers are gone. I assume the motor hangs down where it is now, and the spacers go in the space. Or does the motor mount to the "plinth" and the spacers go below. The latter seems like it would place the idler wheel too high.

 

Everything looks pretty dirty to me. You need to clean and lube the spindle that the turntable gear slips over. If you have it down as far as it will go, and the idler is retracted under the rim of the turntable, but the turn table wobbles, you are missing the shim washers and/or bearing. Most every turntable I've ever seen has a flat caged ball bearing washer and shim washers on either side of it. I don't see the bearing in any of your pictures. It does look like the lower shim washer is in place below that wire snap-ring. Your belt looks a little loose, so it may not get up to 78 rpm and slip.
This is a V-M record changer and you can get most parts for it and your 45rpm changer at: Voice Of Music, V-M Audio Enthusiasts

 

There is a ball bearing type piece at the base of the spindle.
There is also 2 brass sleeves that are inside the shaft of the platter. Are these the pieces you are referring to? I have lubed up the spindle also.

Yes, everything still needs to be cleaned etc. I am just testing everything right now though. No sense in removing grease from a belt yet etc
Thanks for all your help thus far!

 

If there are 2 brass sleeves inside the TT gear hub, which slide over the spindle, those would then be called bushings. I don't remember seeing those ever wear out.
The ball bearing type piece I am referring to looks like a flat washer with little balls embedded in it. There are then , hardened thrust washers, made of hardened steel. You should lube the bearing and put the bearing and washers back the same way they came out.
If you want to confirm that the turntable is down all the way, smear a little Vaseline on the part of the TT gear which would contact the thrush washer/bearing, install the TT and then pull it out. If there is a thrust washer or bearing stuck to it, then it was down all the way.
If the TT went down all the way and you had a lot of wobble, then the bushings are worn out.
If by chance the turntable didn't go down all the way, remove all the washers and bearing, find a thin washer with close inner & outer dimensions, slide it down the spindle to the bottom, slide the original thrust washer & bearing down the spindle, re-install the TT with Vaseline smeared on the end and then pull it out. If nothing comes out stuck to it , then you know that you didn't have the TT seated. If there is something stuck to it, then you probably lost a thrust washer somewhere.

 

Making some serious headway on this thing.
Had the tubes tested, and surprisingly, all is well. Need to have the caps replaced and the rest of the amp gone through, but I'm getting somewhere. I have everything a very good cleaning on the inside of the cabinet and it's looking beautiful inside.

I have the 33/78 player up and running but the speed is a bit off (not by much at all though), so I'll be grabbing a belt.
Looking into whether or not the cart is still good or not. I had sound coming through the speaker, but it was rather low.
The tonearm had some serious pull into the platter and needs to be adjusted somehow. There's got to be a anti-skate adjustment somewhere.
I can't get anything to come in on the tuner, wondering if I need to upgrade the antenna maybe. I'm excited though, this thing is currently "functional". When it first came home, nothing was working, the only sound I could get from the speaker was irradic crackling. Now the 33 player is working and the sound is actually coming through the speaker. After I get the 33 player sorted out 100%, I'll start on the 45 player which needs an idler wheel at bare minimum.
But first I need to sort out the anti-skate and belt, hopefully that will wrap up the 33 player.
I've never replaced caps before, is this a difficult task? Sometimes I get nervous and overwhelmed and screw stuff up. I'd like to do it myself though and learn as I go.

 

Look under the chassis for a big round paper tube, will have 3 or 4 wires, it is the filter cap, easily marked +-, black red or such, I dont see any big filter "cans" on top....replace that and you will
probably get some action. The old crystal cartridge is dead..dont bother with it..many cheap safe replacements that will attach to the tonearm, safe for records..
google cap replacement..lots of good articles...do 1 at a time and test. Tubes last long long time, caps have short life, new ones are 1/4 the size and much better design...The filter will be 40-80 uf or so..must have the same voltage 450-500 volts very important.

 

Is it the same cart in both turntables? That cart when used in the 45 changer had only one stylus.

 

Yes, they appear to be the same cart. (Same shape and dimensions at least).
The 33/78 player cart flips 180*, to play both 33 and 78. The 45cart is stationary.

 

The worst thing that you can do is to plug an old amp/receiver in before you test it. With old wax caps and old resistors, something can be shorted and you can burn up transformers fairly quickly and also damage the tubes. An "old pro" was of initially testing for shorts is to rig up a screw-in light bulb socket, take an extension cord(zip cord type), separate the 2 wires, cut one of the wires, attach each wire to a terminal on the light bulb socket, screw in a 100 watt incandescent light bulb, plug the amp into into the extension cord and then plug the extension cord into the wall. If the 100 watt light bulb lights up, then you have a short. Fix the short before you try to power the amp up directly.
Most record changers, especially old ones, never had anti-skate adjustments. Tracking force is also not easily adjusted. Many record changers had fixed weights in the rear of the tone arms. Your 45 rpm player uses a spring, which the peg that it attaches to can be bent to adjust tracking pressure. What you have to be careful of is reducing the tracking pressure too much. The reject mechanisms are rather crude and unless the tracking pressure is heavy enough to follow the lead-out groove, it may not reject reliably. Many of the older record changers were of the velocity reject type, so the older records had elliptical lead-out grooves allowing the tone arms to move back and forth rapidly and trigger the reject cycle.
The older crystal cartridges are more often than not dead or weak. If you insist, they can be rebuilt by one of the links I gave you. For the 45 player, you are better off with the Pfanstiehl P-51-1 ceramic.

 

I'm still trying to get my jaw up off the floor and into its accustomed position--if that isn't the very model of "hi fi" set we had when I was a tot (up to age 5 or so, maybe), it's the spittin' image. Oh, the happy hours I spent listening to kiddie records, 78s and 45s alike (inherited from my older brother; by the time I came along, 78s had gone, although it hadn't been for very long), on that machine. Later, when I took my first tentative steps down that slippery slope that we know as the audio hobby, Dad set up the guts therefrom--long since replaced in that handsome cabinet by a KLH compact stereo--on an old picnic table in the basement as my first audio system. For a speaker enclosure, he stapled a cardboard carton to the back of the now-amputated speaker board. More hours of innocent record-playing joy.

A word of warning about the cabinet: if it's like my family's, that elaborate burl inlay is not burl inlay at all--it's decals! Be glad the cabinet appears to be in basically good shape, and under no circumstances should you attempt to refinish it, as they will come away and leave you with plain wood. Alas, we learned that the hard way sometime in the late '60s or early '70s, and the poor thing, like many pieces of furniture to which my mom turned her redecorating attention, ended up sporting one of those ghastly "antiqued" finishes that were popular at the time--you know, a sort of bilious green with darker green streaks wiped all over it. Blech!

 

Wow, what a cool story.
Yes the "inlays" are in this unit and they are in overall great shape. I don't plan on touching the outside of the cabinet much. The inside cleaned up very well. I will post some updated pics maybe tomorrow.

 

These were far from being considered "Hi-fi" and were just radio-phonos. Hi-fi didn't really come into play until the mid-50's with the introduction of the likes of RCA's 'New-Orthophonic' and Columbia's '360 degree' . Radio-phonos with single speakers just couldn't cover the entire range hi-fi required. The first hi-fi's typically had at least 2 speakers, a woofer and a tweeter, with a cross-over network. The fancier hi-fi's would have at least 3 speakers, a woofer, a tweeter and a mid-range, also with a cross-over network. This doesn't mean that the old single speaker radio-phonos didn't sound good, as they were entirely capable of reproducing the sounds in the recordings of the day, it just means that they couldn't possibly reproduce the sounds of the recordings to come.

 

Undoubtedly all true, at least by modern standards. But in our family, it was always called "the hi-fi." I suspect the same may have been true in many households, especially (like ours) outside major metropolitan centers, at the time, before audio took off as a mainstream hobby. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but then, neither Mom nor Dad was even remotely an audio hobbyist--about the closest they came was that Dad would bring home each year's Christmas special record from a local tire or carpet store, and when they first set up housekeeping (a good more than a dozen years before I came along) their cheap entertainment, at least so they told me later, was for Dad to buy jukebox retiree 78s for a nickel each or the occasional pop/jazz or Remington classical LP ("Music for Millions"---ca. $2 each when a major label LP was more like $5-6) at the big department store downtown. From the condition of those records as they have come down to me, especially their earlier purchases, my parents really played those records, too. The jukebox rejects, by the by, formed the nucleus of my record collection when I started as an early teen, coming at the hobby from a direction nearly everyone my age would have considered bizarre. By the time I finished high school, I had several spring-driven antique phonos and quite a sizeable accumulation of 78s, mostly 'teens and 'twenties popular augmented by big band records in one direction and (much fewer) earlier mostly popular acoustics in the other. Only when I entered college did I start exploring LPs in any serious way.

 

Yep. Those Firestone and Goodyear annual Christmas LP's were a must-have. Great holiday music for a buck! I still have quite a few which I load into my 50-disc Seeburg Home Stereo Console every year with many other Christmas LP's.
When I was a kid and into the 60's, 78 rpm was the predominant format. I still have a bunch of my 'little golden' yellow 5" 78's. My parents had a portable Magnavox hi-fi which my records sounded a lot better on than my kiddie phono with it's crystal pick-up or my grandparents' Philco radio-phono console which only played 78's. My mom and a friend would go through the old 78 rpm jukebox cast-offs looking for dance records for cheap. Elvis was always on 45's in our house.
In the 60's, I progressed to 45's and a few LP's. I remember buying used jukebox 45's in the 60's. 45's have been my major focus but when I got my first portable Silvertone stereo for Christmas around 1965, I had to start buying stereo LP's.
As an adult, looking for nostalgia, I began buying those rock 'n' roll 78's from the 50's plus replacing the kiddie 78's I'd either lost or worn out. Plenty of 'big band' 78's also joined my collection bringing back the music my parents listened to while I was growing up. Plus buying those jukeboxes and wind-up phonos which also captivated me growing up.

 

OK guys, the 33 player is up and running.
I replaced the belt, motor mounts, rubber bushings, renewed the rubber on the idler wheel, and had to custom mount (using epoxy) a new cart (KCCA kit).
Product Detail

My wife was in tears when I gave her a demo.
The new cart made a huge difference. The old ceramic unit was giving no volume, and skipping right across the record.
The speed is about .5 RPM slow according to an RPM app on my phone. I doubt if there's much else I can do about it now.






I just ordered new motor mounts, cartridge, cycling cam wheel, and rubber bushings for the 45 player.
More updates to come soon.

 

Congrats!

 

Thanks! Between the help here, vintagehifi.net, and the owner of voiceofmusic.com (Gary), I'm getting it all done. Slowly but surely as the parts roll in. This is rather exciting.

Anyone have any suggestions on a good FM antenna? It needs to be the basic 2 wires to attach to 2 screws in the back of the cabinet. (300 ohm?) I pick up ZERO AM or FM with the unit. Is there anything that would need to be cleaned or adjusted? Or is just the antennas? I don't mind that the AM antenna doesn't work, but I'd like a good FM antenna.
Something like would this work, but I'm wondering if there's a better option.
INDOOR FM RADIO STEREO RECEIVER T DIPOLE ANTENNA 300 OHM 6 FT NEW US SELLER | eBay

 

Looking at your pictures, you've already got an AM antenna inside the cabinet. FM antennas can be external and are similar to a UHF bow tie antenna. With most stereo receivers, they come with an antenna wire type antenna in the shape of a "T". On consoles, the "T" is stapled to the upper edge on the rear of a cabinet with the leg part of the "T" running over and attaching to the FM antenna terminals of the receiver.

The funny thing about FM, if there is a signal which is accessible inside your house, you may not need an antenna. You should be able to pick up something. Radios are a whole different world and just because you get sound out of your amp doesn't necessarily mean that the radio circuit works. Tuners need to be cleaned and you better know what you are doing or you will damage it beyond repair. Even if your tubes test good, you have to replace all the caps and it would be a good idea to replace all the resistors. If you don't bring the radio/amp chassis up electronically, you will fry those tubes and damage the transformers.

 

Yes, it has an AM antenna, as well as an old cracked,brittle FM antenna.
I was looking for suggestions on a new FM antenna replacement.

 

I saw your link and that is what the modern indoor antennas are. Depending on interference inside your house, the indoor FM antenna may not work. For some reason the older FM radios don't work well, especially those without AFC because FM frequencies tend to drift. The tuners are more delicate and sensitive.

 

Typical for the changer to run a little slow when "cold". The motor is not a synchronous type, so the speed increases after a few minutes of running. The motor, and entire changer should be completely disassembled, cleaned and lubed to operate like new and be reliable. You deserve a lot of credit so far that you have one of the changers up and running, and have not cooked the amp. If you plan to replace the caps, be sure to bleed off any voltage in the main filter cap, and you'll need to acquire soldering skills. The solder job is perhaps the weakest point of many techs, just from watching you tube demos, etc.. makes me cringe. Invest in a Weller iron, 60/40 solder, do not attempt lead free as it is hard to use. Do not try silver solder which doesn't flow as easily as 60/40. (the old fashioned stuff flows nicely and makes a far better connection than an inexperienced cold solder from lead free or silver solder) Practice, practice.. you've got it when your solder flows in about one to three seconds. (typical electronics connection) Longer than that, you cook your parts/ wire insulation, and not doing it right. Watch a tutorial on how to solder, otherwise my post will be too long.

That's a very nice unit.

A restoration should be in the hands of a pro, but appears you're doing fine so far! There's a lot to know, a significant learning curve. The people who do this kind of work have earned their stripes. At least some mechanical ability is a requirement.