Ever heard of a "recordio"?

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domvac

New member
Years ago, my uncle had a t.v. repair shop in a small town. When he retired, he took all the old left behind t.v's. and radios and stored them in the barn on the family farm. I went out recently and went through the left-overs and snagged some old radios and also a unit called a "Recordio". This was built in 1947 by Canadian Marconi and is a record player/recorder. It's a box unit with a lid that lifts revealing the turntable with two tone arms, one for recording and the other for playback. It even has a couple of blank discs left over. It has a p/a function and an a.m. radio and of course, is tube powered. I haven't taken a close look at the amp yet and I don't know if it works, but it would be an interesting addition to my humble home studio as a conversation piece. The cabinet appears to be made of maple or blond oak. I'm not sure.

Any one ever heard of these? Talk about going "High tech"!
 
My Mom told me about having one of those! I think it actually belonged to here brother, who is 12 years older than her. Very cool conversation piece, indeed!

Man, you could make some good money with the rest of the stuff in your family barn, if you do some research as to what's there, what condition it is in, etc. I'd bet there are some good, usable tubes in all that stuff, at the least.
 
stevieb said:
My Mom told me about having one of those! I think it actually belonged to here brother, who is 12 years older than her. Very cool conversation piece, indeed!

Man, you could make some good money with the rest of the stuff in your family barn, if you do some research as to what's there, what condition it is in, etc. I'd bet there are some good, usable tubes in all that stuff, at the least.
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Yeah, my Uncle has several boxes of good tubes left over from his years of repairing stuff. He likes to tinker with things and uses them to get some of this stuff up and running. I don't know how tubes age just sitting there. Most of this stuff is over 50 years old.
 
If the vacuum seal on them has not been compromised, there is a good chance they are still fine. Scout around your town for an old, but functional tube tester- they used to be in every drug store, some survive today. I found one at Pelican Electronics in New Orleans, and Northwest Speaker Exchange in Marietta has one, too- there is probably one near you, call around. They are not hard to use, and usually you can use them for free.

I scored a stash of old tubes from an estate sale in New Orleans, around 1998. I knew almost nothing about tubes, but was able to test them at Pelican, and sold them via ebay. Made a dandy little profit on that, too.

Oh, and if you do well with this, I wouldn't mind if you tossed a few old but good 6L6's, 6V6's, EL84's or EL34's my way, by way of saying "Thank you.":D
 
stevieb said:
If the vacuum seal on them has not been compromised, there is a good chance they are still fine. Scout around your town for an old, but functional tube tester- they used to be in every drug store, some survive today. I found one at Pelican Electronics in New Orleans, and Northwest Speaker Exchange in Marietta has one, too- there is probably one near you, call around. They are not hard to use, and usually you can use them for free.

Funny you should mention that. Years ago, I had a tube tester and lent it to a friend. I had to harass him to get it back and when he returned it, it was missing the tube settings guidebook. Without that, the tester was useless. So, eventually, it was lost in the moving and priorities of life.
I did work on that Recordio today. I repaired the station selector on the radio, the motor on the turntable and cleaned the whole unit and "voila".... it works. Actually, it sounds pretty decent. The radio has a real nice full sound but the needle cartridges are missing from both tonearms so I couldn't fully test the recording function. I can get a bit of a buzz from the playback tonearm by touching the leads, but still, no cartridge there to playback. Man, you gotta luv this old stuff. The wiring in the amp is incredible. No p.c. boards or chips here. Hand wired, capacitors, resistors and diodes, tubes and sockets and a lot of moving parts on the radio selector. I remember working on this stuff when I was a kid in my Uncles repair shop. Pure electronic romance.
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The cartridges or "needles" for that unit are probably small steel bars with a conical shape machined on one end. If you can find one, a machine shop can make you others.
 
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