is this the most 1980s stereo system you've ever seen or what it's like a combination
of Knight Rider, Tron, and Miami Vice it has the blacked out look with red accents
3D wireframe graphics with the road disappearing into the horizon and of
course all these fabulous pastel colors it fits right in with the Atari XE Game System
"that's why I brought the fruit boots"
it also has an amplifier with dual slider volume controls a five band graphic equalizer a double
cassette deck with soft eject and obligatory high-speed dubbing an AM/FM radio tuner
and a vacuum fluorescent digital clock display with sleep timer and alarm
and it looks even cooler in the dark because that's when you can see the lighted volume
control, the lighted tuning dial pointer and the various indicator lights for all the functions
it has and if you crank up the volume you can see what it calls the stereo intensity meter
there's two incandescent light bulbs in there one for each channel
so that's the left channel that's the right channel
and if you turn up the volume they begin to flicker and glow
I unfortunately did not get it with the original matching speakers but I did
get it with the original matching belt drive auto return turntable
which even included a copy of its original instructions
and it even still has the protective film on the decal
I'm sure the audiophiles watching this are going to call it black plastic crap but that's not the
point if you had this back in the '80s you would have been the coolest kid on the block
yes it's from that brand everyone loves to hate Soundesign and it's
not actually a stereo system it's an Audio Core
on the back we can see it's Soundesign model number 5967 it has 8 ohm speaker outputs an input
for a turntable with a ceramic phono cartridge two line level inputs one marked TV or the one
marked CD/aux terminals for an external FM antenna or you can use a built-in antenna
a power output for the included turntable supplying 12 volts DC
center positive and of course the power cord and it was made in Taiwan
I now have it connected to a small pair of RCA bookshelf speakers and it sounds
surprisingly good through them although to be fair
these are probably a lot better than the speakers it originally came with
[Music]
it has surprisingly good sound quality and reception on both AM and FM
that's an appropriately 80s tune to play on this system
and now it's on AM
that actually sounds really good for AM
as you can hear the cassette player also works and sounds fine now although initially it did
have a problem so I'll show you what was wrong with it and how I fixed it
the left side cassette deck works
the right side deck it doesn't rewind it doesn't fast forward it will play but if I let it go for
more than a few seconds it's gonna eat my tape because the take-up reel is not turning
as I expected it has the typical Tanashin style mechanism with one motor to run both
decks and actually the belts are perfectly fine so I wondered what the problem was
until I realized I could hear some parts rattling around inside this cabinet when
I was moving it around and I found this a spring and a white plastic cap
and that is part of this clutch mechanism you can see that one is still intact but this one popped
off the reason why that happens is because over time the plastic shrinks while the metal post is
sitting on stays the same size so eventually the plastic cracks and when that happens the pressure
of the spring causes that white plastic cap to pop off and then you have loose parts flying around
inside your cassette player and in this case when this wheel becomes loose it no longer works
and here's a look at the main circuit board this part is the radio tuner with
the built-in AM antenna the tuning capacitor and then over here is all the cassette recorder
electronics there's the recording switch which gets activated when you press record
and here's the amplifier with the heatsink on the amplifier chips
I found a 1987 date code on one of the ICs on the circuit board
which is exactly what I expected based on this system's styling
so first I'm going to try to just put this spring and the
plastic cap back into place see if it holds it all and if it does...
no, it's just popping off because that plastic cap got cracked
the pressure of the spring is too much there you can see how it's cracked all the way to
the center so I won't be able to reuse this so I'll need to find a replacement for it
here is hopefully what will be the solution two brand new never used generic Tanashin
style cassette mechanisms that I got for the sole purpose of scavenging parts off of them
and these do have that same kind of clutch mechanism or at least it looks the same
you never know if they might have modified the design over the years so we'll see if it'll
be compatible between a brand new cassette mechanism made today and one from the 1980s
OK here we go gently trying to pry off the cap that was pretty easy so there's the new cap and
spring now I'll try putting the new spring and the new cap on the old 1980s mechanism
hey look at that I think it might work
first let's just make sure the left side deck still works this
is the one that still has its original spring and cap on the
clutch mechanism but I did add a drop of glue to make sure it stays in place
"a few brief excerpts from some of the more than
300 articles you would have heard on Newstrack if you'd been a subscriber"
OK it plays fast forwards and it rewinds so that appears to still be working fine now
let's try the one we fixed with the parts transplanted from the brand new mechanism
"on Newstrack if you'd been a subscriber during this past year
including useful information about the tax saving aspects of Clifford trusts"
it plays it fast forwards and it rewinds
there's one feature this thing brags about more than anything else high speed dubbing
high dubbing speed high speed high speed dubbing HSD high-speed dubbing so of course
I have to give that a try so I'm going to put my source tape in the playback deck
and the most '80s looking blank cassette and the recording deck and surprisingly there is
one feature this thing has which it does not mention and that is synchro start dubbing
that's where you press pause and then record on the recording deck but you notice it's
not moving yet until you press play which will immediately release the pause and start recording
and here's what the final result sounds like
"it's important to inhale through your mouth
to make sure that enough oxygen reaches your hard working muscles"
kind of shrill and warbly sounding but that's what
you would expect for a high speed dubbing copy on a system like this
and even at normal speed this is never going to do that great of a job at recording because it
only has automatic level control it does not have Dolby noise reduction and it does not properly
support recording on chrome or metal tapes but for playing pre-recorded tapes I think it does
a perfectly respectable job I'll give you a direct hookup sample of what that sounds like
now let's take a closer look at this plastic fantastic turntable this may
look like a rubber platter mat on a metal platter but it's entirely made of hard
plastic and this is just painted and engraved to kind of look more fancy than it really is
the tonearm is also entirely made of plastic and what may look like a counterweight in
the back is just a decoration and yes this is your old friend the Chuo Denshi CZ-800
ceramic phono cartridge used on about a million different modern Crosley Victrola
type record players today but they were already using this back in 1987
and in case you're wondering about the tracking force
it's about 5.7 grams which is on the heavy side but it is within the recommended range
for this cartridge and in normal use it won't damage your records and that's
actually pretty light compared to this record which recommends 8 to 10 grams
the turntable mechanism is mounted on springs to dampen vibrations and as typical there's
a transport screw back here to lock it down when you're moving it but I'm glad I found the included
instructions because there's actually a second hidden transport screw underneath the platter
and the way you get to that is there's a little hole here you rotate it to the back corner here
and then you stick in a small screwdriver and turn it to release the second transport screw
which the previous owner of this never did so I don't know if they either never
used this turntable or they used it but they didn't release that transport screw
some turntables have large rubber feet which you can turn to adjust the height to help level
the turntable but of course these are fake at just part of the plastic molding although you
do get little rubber feet in the middle has a cooling vent for the motor which is something
you don't normally see and here's the sticker record player model number 0908CP 12 volts DC
70 milliamps maximum assembled in the USA record player made in Taiwan or Mexico another sticker
here showing a date code of January 1988 although it looks like it wasn't inspected by anybody
and if we remove the bottom cover we can see the mechanism which is something I haven't
seen this style before with this metal mechanism as you can see by the sticker
this one was made in Mexico I don't know by whom it definitely does not look like
a BSR based design the motor was made by Matsushita with a September 1987
date code and you can see the trimmers for adjusting the speed for 33 and 45
there are some good things about this turntable one is that it has automatic return when the
record is finished playing and that motor is actually almost entirely silent in operation
very good quality motor and more importantly Soundesign actually knew how to properly match
the impedance of the ceramic cartridge so it doesn't sound so dreadfully tinny like modern
systems which use this cartridge I'll give you a direct hookup sample of what it sounds like
so obviously this system is not going to please the audiophiles but that's not the
point if you were a kid back in the '80s you would have been thrilled to have this
as your first stereo system and it had to be made with some decent quality if it's
all still working fine today with just one minor repair to the cassette deck