Ferguson 205 STA

[tiv48]

I got given this tuner amp the other day its not really my type of thing but i thought i would have a look anyway.
on removing the case i found the main smoothing cap had been replaced .
The defuser  had gone brittle and broken away from the two springs .
But the rest looked ok.
Because the mains lead had been cut short i dug out the safe block .
connected a pair of tatty warfdale  speakers an applied some mains.
I selected MW and turned on.
My first surprise was the sound quality it did not sound like a solid state amp
Deep bass and smooth treble (yes treble on MW)
tried FM with just a length of wire still the same smooth sound with maybe too much bass.
All in all i am impressed  by this vintage fergy.
no sure if i will go any further as i said not really my thing but i may keep it.
Rob T    

[Refugee]

My parents had one of those as a main living room system with a Garrard turntable.
It had all silicon transistors except the output stages.

[tiv48]

this also came with a fergerson badged sp25 mk2 that I have not looked at yet (mains lead cut) it does look like it has a ceramic cart and not the more usual magnetic G800 or N75ED.
Rob T

[Refugee]

The one we had was ceramic I from what I remember.

[Terry]

I'm fascinated by the use of 2A 3-pin sockets for auxiliary power!

They wouldn't have been very common by the time that this came on the market and I wonder just how easy they might have been to find in the average High Street ...

[tiv48]

I believe that it came as a sort of component system with the turn table and reel to reel tape deck pre fitted with the plugs .
Rob T

[tiv48]

And the matching Garrard SP25 record deck
this looks in near mint condition .
This will be added to my collection

[Refugee]

That does look like the one we had when I was a teenager.

[fx3278]

I have one of this Vintage Ferguson 205 STA receivers which has not been used for years. Recently I decided to see if it still works. Unfortunately the tuning has completely seized but the other functions such as the gram and tape work fine and the sound is very good. I had an engineer friend look at it and he said the tuning capacitor need's replacing together with the tuning knob as the original somehow got lost and has a replacement that does not work very well. Can anyone offer any advise to sort out the radio tuning problems.

Thanks

[Terry]

Welcome to GVR.

From the photo in Post #1, this of obviously of far eastern manufacture or constructed using the same components - probably the former - but the picture doesn't show the tuning gang, although it may be in the metal box on the right.

Some more information of this area could be useful - could you take some detailed pictures, including the tuning shaft and the method of connecting to the gang?

Unless it has been interfered with, I'm not so sure that it is the gang itself that is seized, rather than the drive to it.

As far as the knob is concerned, is it just that the spindle is splined but the knob designed for a plain shaft? In which case, is the knob intended to be fitted using a grub screw, or what?