Last night, an older lady who I went to church with many years ago called to say that they were getting rid of the contents of her neighbor's house and would I be interested in a console stereo.

When I arrived, I was hoping to find a nice '60's model tube unit; but, instead, I found the usual el cheapo built '70's particleboard & plastic junk with cheap electronics and small speakers. However, this '76 Truetone (built by Soundesign) looked to be in decent physical shape; so, I went ahead and bought it.

They also had a 13" Midland knob-tuned color TV for $10 and I bought that, as well. I almost left it behind because who else around here would give $10 for a 30 year old TV? Likely no one; but, I figured that if I didn't take it, the TV would have wound up in the garbage. The TV works pretty good; but, needs it's tuner and controls cleaned. In the near future, I'll make another video of this TV.

Back to the stereo, it's problems consisted of very noisy controls, a seized platter on it's BSR turntable (no surprise), and a misadjused crosstalk adjustment on the 8-track tape player. I cleaned the controls with control cleaner, got the changer working and I used the hot soldering iron method to remove the platter (you can see one of my earlier videos on how to do that), and I adjusted the crosstalk for the 8-track player. I almost didn't worry with the tape player; but, I was able to get to the adjustment without taking it apart.

For what it is, it's not a bad sounding stereo; but, it's certainly not a Magnavox, RCA, Zenith, or Motorola from the '60's. By the '70's, most console stereo's took a nosedive in quality, in both terms of the cabinet and the electronics. By the '70's, even Zenith and Magnavox started using cheap imported electronics and crappy cabinets. Still, I'd consider this one to be better than a Crosley reproduction from China.

One of the nice things about these later consoles is that they often don't need as much work as the older units. Usually all they need is a good control cleaning and service on the record changer. Sometimes, I'll get one with bad capacitors or a shorted output IC/transistor.