ITT 7101 Compact music system

[Crackle]

I bought this yesterday,    
picked it up and got it home then dropped it. One hinge flew off the acrylic lid, broken away from its screw fixings, and a chunk was snapped out of the back of the lid.   
I didn't notice before I bought it that the controls were labelled in German, I had decided a while ago to not buy the European ITT models, there are thousands of them, and just stick to the ones sold in the UK. Anyway at least this one is not badged Schaub Lorenz, so it almost passes as an ITT-KB model.

No thats not a USB port on the back panel it is the AM aerial and earth sockets.
   
Here is a better view of the sockets.
   
Anyway its all working now.
   
   
I fitted a new mains lead, the old one had been cut off, it had blue and black wires, blue being live. The on off switch was intermittent, so I drilled a small hole in the back so I could squirt in some switch cleaner.
I had to make a new belt for the autostop mechanism on the cassette deck. I had a belt that was almost the right fit but too sloppy so I cut 5mm out and re-joined with superglue.
The main drive belt was a flat one, it had a permanent kink in it where it had been sitting round the small drive capstan for years, if left it would have caused a bit of wow as it passed round the capstan. I managed to get it back to how it should be with boiling water to help reset the rubber and by giving it a bend in the opposite way. The heads and pinch roller were cleaned with a little meths on a kitchen tissue.
   
The record deck is a BSR P182,
   
the auto mechanism drive wheel was seized solid with dry grease. I managed to get it off with heat from the soldering iron on the spindle. The cam follower roller was also seized, the same treatment loosened that and WD40 helped to get it spinning freely, I put a drop of sewing machine oil on to help stop it seizing in future.
The auto mechanism drive wheel and its spindle was cleaned and refitted with fresh grease.
The turntable bearing was also cleaned of all the old grease, repacked and replaced.
If I manage to repair the acrylic lid I will update with some new photos.

The trouble is now, I have nowhere to put it on display.

Mike

[Terry]

I didn't notice before I bought it that the controls were labelled in German ...

I fitted a new mains lead, the old one had been cut off, it had blue and black wires, blue being live.

Any idea of country of origin, Mike? It has a UK made turntable and most of the front panel markings around the cassette deck are in English. Why not translate everything into the same language?

I don't think that was a German mains lead but, unfortunately, I lost my look-up table of European mains lead colours many years ago - probably about the same time that the unified colours we use today were introduced (about 1969 or 1970).

I though the German live was brown. It's a pity it wasn't a three core mains lead - that would have clinched it as the German earth lead was bright red!

Other possibilities are that it was built for sale in Austria or the German speaking part of Switzerland.

Do the stations/transmitters marked on the radio dial give any clue?

[Crackle]

Hi Terry
ITT normally identified items sold in the UK with the country of origin, but often this may only be a sticky label and they are sometimes missing.
This music centre is an interesting hybrid of names, but I have no evidence to suggest that the parts are not all original to the machine.
I think the most convincing evidence that it was not intended for the UK market was the mains lead wire colours.
I have attached a better photo of the dial, which does not give much support to it being intended for UK consumers.
   
Another interesting item is the 4 pin DIN used for the headphone socket, Michael W. thinks these were mainly used on German stuff.


Most of the ITT-KB items containing cassette recorders were made in Japan or Taiwan.
But I have two other ITT music centres, a KA2030 which does not have any country of origin, and a MC22 which has a small label identifying it as made in Malta.
   
Although it is interesting to note the address of ITT on the label on the rear panel of the MC22, which I believe is the last known address for ITT-KB in the UK, and was almost certainly part of the old STC factory.
   

All in all I suspect this item, the ITT 7101 has been bought into the country privately.

The service information for the ITT 7100 (note this is a 7101)  is on line on a Dutch web site. https://freeservicemanuals.info/en/servi...ompact.pdf

Mike

[Crackle]

I have found this ITT MC5030 Music centre in my c. 1977 ITT catalogue.
   
It appears to be identical to the ITT 7100, but the image in the catalogue has English names for the controls.

The ITT 7101 has a later BSR deck so the likely date for the 7101 is probably late 1977 or early 78
The ITT SL58 Super cassette tape recorder with similar style buttons was made in Taiwan.
Mike

[Crackle]

Ran out of edit time.
Anyway I think I will have to list this ITT 7101 music centre in the Radio Museum as a Schaub Lorenz model.

Mike

[Refugee]

It may have been bought by British armed forces.
They had a big place in Germany. If the set was kept for more than a certain time that could be transported back tax free.
Falling short on the tax rule meant than many sets were dumped at the border to an unknown fate.

[Terry]

Mike, I wasn't suggesting that it was intended for sale in the UK - I was just interested in the mish-mash of English and German screen printing on the front panel. However, I find this set an intriguing puzzle!

The MW dial shows all West German stations plus the usual Brussels, Hilversum and, of course, Luxembourg. Falun was a new one on me but is in Sweden, it seems.

But the mains lead screams out that it was not sold or intended for sale in West Germany, given your estimated year of manufacture.

It became illegal to sell appliances in the UK which did not have a mains lead complying with the new European standard in 1969, IIRC - but no later than 1970. Note that this was not an EU ruling - the EU didn't even exist then and the 6 nation EEC had no such powers plus, of course, we had yet to join the EEC at that point!

IEC - the International Electrotechnical Commission - was responsible and its recommendations were published as IEC 60173: 1964.

You have to pay to read these IEC documents but I was fascinated by the footnote to this extract from the sample available on line:

"At its meeting in Bucharest, Technical Committee No. 20 accepted the draft Recommendation, which was submitted to the National Committees for approval under the Six Month's Rule in August 1962.

The following countries voted explicitly in favour of publication:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway,  Romania, South Africa,  Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom.

The French National Committee voted against the draft Recommendation, but only because this Committee does not agree with the word "exclusively" in Sub-clause 3.1, i.e. the French Committee does not agree that in France use of the green/yellow core as a phase conductor should be prohibited where there is no protective conductor in a flexible cable or cord."

Ah, well, trust the French to be awkward!

I assume that laws similar to those in the UK were passed in those other countries?

Germany in that list would, of course, have referred to West Germany, the countries of the Eastern bloc being notably missing from the list which begs the question: was that set sold in East Germany? I would have thought that such imports would have been banned during the cold war but I've come across a reference to those colours being used on a Polish product, so did the Eastern bloc have its own 'international' standards?

Another curiosity is the dial in that UK leaflet which is in Metres! Traditionally, all UK radio dials had been in metres until the first far eastern imports arrived in 1962. As they'd originally been designed for sale in the US, their dials were in hundreds of kilohertz which, no doubt, confused a lot of early buyers! One saving grace, though, was that one of the CONELRAD frequency markers was very close to the Light Programme so, at least, gave them a start in finding their way!

I'm sure that most, if not all, German sets I saw in the 60s and later were dual marked and there was certainly sufficient incentive to metricate the Yanks:

'AFN Frankfurt broadcasts on an assigned frequency of eight hundred, seventy-two kilocycles per second, three hundred, forty-four meters in the Medium waveband with a power of one hundred, fifty thousand watts!'

However, as the mass influx of far eastern sets grew and grew throughout the 60s, virtually all with dials marked in frequency, dials marked in meters became the minority so what proportion of receivers sold in the late 70s would still be marked in metres?

[Crackle]

so what proportion of receivers sold in the late 70s would still be marked in metres?

Quite a few looking at ITT as an example.
If you look at my collection of ITT radios mainly destined for the UK, http://www.kbmuseum.org.uk/itt_radios.htm then it seems that up to about 76 or 77 they were marked in metres, with one or 2 exceptions. Then from 78 onwards they were mostly dual marked in m and kHz.
The problem is it is difficult to be certain regarding the dates. I have tried to follow the same convention as The Radio Museum, using a ? to denote a date + or - one year, and ?? to denote the date is a best guess.
We need more information to come forward in the form of service information such as Trader sheets where they often mentioned the release date of each radio model.
The Radio Museum does not consider the dates on the manufacturers service documents to always be a very reliable source, because the radio may have been in development and testing for some time prior to its official release.
Personally, if the manufacturers service documents are dated, and ITT did not always date them in the latter days, then that date is good enough for me.

Mike

[Crackle]

We now have the finished article, with the chunk which was broken out of the lid glued on and unfortunately still a little visible, luckily it is on the rear edge of the lid. I spent 3 hours this morning polishing out all the scratches gained from its visit to the tip, which is where the seller said he rescued it from. The hinge has been refitted using superglue, I dont think it is very strong as the plastic is not the sort which glues easily, but it is holding up at the moment.
   
Places to store the item are really at a premium now, here is the music centre in its new home, the spare guinea pig hutch.
   
and a few more photos here http://www.kbmuseum.org.uk/itt_images/7101/7101.htm

Mike