For a while a Ferrograph Series Seven 7502D has been sitting at the back of my bench awaiting its turn to be re-awakened from slumber. It is a half-track stereo machine with Dolby NR and has test labels that indicate that it was built in 1976.
I have had this machine for a year or so but not got around to looking at it till recently. The pinch roller is intact but was very stiff on its spindle and on opening up the case it is apparent that the pinch roller and the three idlers have been replaced recently and whoever did the work made a tidy job of cleaning up the black ‘goo’ from the soggy originals.
The internals were given another clean and I worked round all the usual oiling and greasing points to get the mechanisms and rollers moving nicely, also cleaned up the grimy heads, guides and capstan.
On powering up most of the lamps worked and trying a test tape gave sound from the lower track (right) only and just noise from the upper track. After a bit of fiddling and more cleaning of the equalisation switch contacts I got it to play through both channels. However any mechanical shock caused the left channel to go off and on. I did some tracing and found the problem was simply loose connections where the makers had decided to use simple push-on connections for the replay head leads on the PCB. I cleaned these and simply soldered them up solid, shown ringed on the attached ‘photo - problem solved! Access to these boards is a pain as the Dolby encode - decode boards are stacked with the normal record and replay boards on these machines.
It records OK but could probably benefit from being properly set up.
I removed the knobs and front panel and replaced the dead VU meter lamps and gave them all a bit of polish before re-assembly.
A previous owner had given the wood case a coat of stain varnish that looks horrible so this is being stripped to bare wood and will be carefully finished to try and match the factory original.
I have had this machine for a year or so but not got around to looking at it till recently. The pinch roller is intact but was very stiff on its spindle and on opening up the case it is apparent that the pinch roller and the three idlers have been replaced recently and whoever did the work made a tidy job of cleaning up the black ‘goo’ from the soggy originals.
The internals were given another clean and I worked round all the usual oiling and greasing points to get the mechanisms and rollers moving nicely, also cleaned up the grimy heads, guides and capstan.
On powering up most of the lamps worked and trying a test tape gave sound from the lower track (right) only and just noise from the upper track. After a bit of fiddling and more cleaning of the equalisation switch contacts I got it to play through both channels. However any mechanical shock caused the left channel to go off and on. I did some tracing and found the problem was simply loose connections where the makers had decided to use simple push-on connections for the replay head leads on the PCB. I cleaned these and simply soldered them up solid, shown ringed on the attached ‘photo - problem solved! Access to these boards is a pain as the Dolby encode - decode boards are stacked with the normal record and replay boards on these machines.
It records OK but could probably benefit from being properly set up.
I removed the knobs and front panel and replaced the dead VU meter lamps and gave them all a bit of polish before re-assembly.
A previous owner had given the wood case a coat of stain varnish that looks horrible so this is being stripped to bare wood and will be carefully finished to try and match the factory original.
