We are in the process of probably purchasing yet another home for us to live in...our 15th! (We only live in one at a time, but we have moved a lot over the years.)
The house was built in 1970 and one feature that I assume is original to the house is the turntable that I assume is connected with the intercom system in the house.
(We have only been in the house a couple times and have not yet done the pre-purchase inspections and subsequent negotiations with the seller, so we won't know for sure that we are buying the house for a couple weeks yet.)
I have been told that the system works, but I fiddled with it for a few moments and could not get the platter to spin on its own. We will see.
I had never seen (or heard of) one of these before.
I have attached a few photos taken with the rather poor camera in my $40 Semi-Smart phone.
Nick
I was going to post a couple more photos, but the security problems and the fact that I spent the last 4 hours trying to reinstall Corel Paintshop Photo Pro on my computer have used up my patience. If anyone would like to see more photos, I will take them with a better camera the next time I am at the house and figure out a photo editor to use to re-size or whatever is needed to post the photos.
Those built in radio/intercoms were quite popular here in new homes in the mid to late 60's through the 80's. I even still saw them bring installed occasionally in the early 90's but they seem to have pretty much gone away in new homes now.
But, I never saw or heard of one with a turntable attachment beyond sone that had an auxilary in for whatever you wanted to attach to it....turntable, 8 track player......
Terry
It's a garden variety 1970s BSR turntable with a ceramic cartridge. Looks a lot like what came with my first stereo system in 1971. It's probably going to need lubrication and cleaning to work properly because 46-year-old grease isn't likely to be good. Don't expect it to sound like a modern stereo system. It's probably mono, considering it's coming from intercom speakers in the ceiling and somewhat limited in fidelity. Whoever said it worked probably meant the communication part still works from room to room and never tried the radio or phono. It doesn't look abused, so you could have a working system there.
As for pictures, I use MS Office Picture Manager, which comes with Office, to resize photos. It's very basic, but it works. Search on Office Picture and it should come up if you have Office installed.
Good luck with your house shopping!
Thanks, Jonathan, for the suggestion of MS Office Picture Manager. I do have it in my system, and if there is a photo attached to this post, it must have worked!
I don't expect it to sound like much, but it will be fun to make it work. The cabinet is in really nice shape, so it would be a pity to pull it out...and if it is going to be there, it needs to work! It will be hanging on the wall as a token "throw-back". (I wonder if I could adapt my B&O turntable to this thing...I don't think so!)
Nick
Interesting concept, probably would still work, just needing a new belt on the platter, and as it's likely to be a ceramic cartridge, upgrading it to something like an Audio Technica AT95e would probably make a reasonable sounding turntable (though the sound coming from the intercom probably wouldn't change much, I just like my AT95e enough to recommend it as a basic upgrade!!)... :)
I am curious about the record though, no title on the label, just a Philips logo, is it a test or demo record or something?
It wouldn't work with a B&O even if you could get it to fit, since you'd have to shoehorn in some kind of amp for the magnetic cartridge. I know you were kidding, but it's better to keep things original anyway. That intercom looks like it has real wood trim on it, which is unusual for the 1970s, the era of plastic wood trim.
The vintage of that house could mean there is phone wiring everywhere and you could install lots of hard-wired 2500s, 2554s, 2702s and large modular round button touch-tone Trimlines everywhere. That era's phones are still relatively cheap to acquire if that's what you like. And you could also go the rotary route if that's your thing. One of my favorite phone experiences ever was finding and terminating all my aunt's Southern Bell pre-wiring in her house, done in 1965.
Keep us posted on the house. Glad the MS Office Picture Manager worked.
Reminds me of my Aunt's house, remodeled in the 60s. She had a built in toaster in the wall in the kitchen. It tilted out at an angle to insert the bread. When she was moving, the boy next door exclaimed "You have a built-in toaster, and you're moving???!!! ???
How about Built in Ironing Boards? Was a door in the hallway maybe 12-16 inches wide (fit in a 16" stud space I assume) and a good 4 feet high. Open the door and an ironing board dropped down, must have had a leg on it too I guess. Oh maybe not, I think it just dropped down so that it was parallel to the floor and could be rotated to be closer or a bit further away from the wall. Was in our 'new" built in 1958 house that I moved to when I was 1 year old.
Sort of like this but I think ours was a bit fancier, had a nice door that matched all the rest of the doors throughout the house.
Terry
I recognize the top half of that unit - we had one in our house in Houston in the late 70s (house was built in late 60s or early 70s). I remember ours had 2 inputs on the inside - one for a phonograph, the other for a tape player - learned really quickly not to hook up a second tape player to the phonograph input... (We had neither a phonograph or a tape unit in ours...)
It rarely was used, except for the radio throughout the house - we could hear Mom's voice without the intercom system! (And we had 3 phones in that house - all Trimline TouchTone desk models (Mom wanted a wall model in the kitchen, but it was wired for a desk model.) White in the bedroom and office, don't remember the color in the kitchen, but it wasn't white, due to the overall brown/rust tones in the kitchen...
Jim
Terry,
I don't believe that this particular house has a built-in ironing board, but I have noticed during out house hunting here in Tucson, that several of the places we have looked at did have them.
Jonathan,
The wood trim on the turntable looks to be real walnut and the finish looks great. I have only taken a quick look at it, but I will examine it more closely when I get a chance. I am wondering if perhaps it has been refinished. My wife and I think the unit is cool, but kind of wish the whole thing was hidden behind the wood when it was closed. I am glad it is not plastic...there are limits to what one can put up with for originality!
Bloke,
Now you have got me curious! I will give you a report on the record that is on the turntable after I go back to the house on Thursday - we will be doing inspections then.
I hope we don't find anything major with the inspections, I am tired of looking at houses! It was about this time last year that we started thinking about selling our place in Colorado, wondering where we would end up. Two weekends in a row of shoveling significant snowfalls helped us decide to try some place where it was not likely to snow. We bought the place in Tucson that we are currently in, this past August...and then sold it last week to the nextdoor neighbor! So now we are on the move again :o.
Jim,
I hope that we might end up with my AE50 on the wall in the kitchen. I know that the house is a bit "new" for an AE50, but it is just such a cool looking phone!
Nick
Quote from: AE_Collector on January 17, 2017, 07:39:00 PM
How about Built in Ironing Boards? Was a door in the hallway maybe 12-16 inches wide (fit in a 16" stud space I assume) and a good 4 feet high. Open the door and an ironing board dropped down, must have had a leg on it too I guess. Oh maybe not, I think it just dropped down so that it was parallel to the floor and could be rotated to be closer or a bit further away from the wall. Was in our 'new" built in 1958 house that I moved to when I was 1 year old.
Sort of like this but I think ours was a bit fancier, had a nice door that matched all the rest of the doors throughout the house.
Terry
Yep, we used to have one almost identical to the photo in our house in Brockville. It was located in the kitchen between the basement and dining-room doors. It had a leg which dropped down when it was tipped out.
Nice little unit. When I saw the post I thought it might have been another one of these...
http://nwga.craigslist.org/ele/5912665595.html ( dead link 03-07-21 )
Forgive me if someone already mentioned this. The turntable is most likely belt driven. Bet the belts would need to be changed. I see a model number 600A on the turntable but can't make out the maker. It doesn't look like the AM/FM receiver is stereo as I don't see a balance control.
Quote from: Fabius on January 20, 2017, 02:09:27 PM
Forgive me if someone already mentioned this. The turntable is most likely belt driven.
You're forgiven... ;D
I took a good look at it and it's a McDonald 500A, also known as a BSR UA70 apparently according to google, so spares can be looked up for either name, though I don't know how plentiful they are as I didn't get that far into looking it up... :)
I did a quick search for parts and it seems that there are sources for the parts it might need.
We don't own the house yet, and my wife probably won't let me put this item at the top of the priority list, but it will be fun to get it working.
19and 41, Thanks for pointing out that 1964 Magnavox unit on Craig's List. It looks a bit fancier than "ours". It is pretty cool that it could be mounted on a wall, or one could order legs for it.
Bloke, I took a photo of the label of the record currently in the unit. I remember when this group was current! (I guess being old is something I will have to own up to one of these years!) The record came out in 1963 won a Grammy for the Best Performance by a Chorus and they also won the Grammy for Best New Artist that year. One can find the album out there on the internet for the princely sum of $9!
Nick
I thought I'd have a look for info on that group, and they're apparently still going today, albeit with different people (kind of like Foreigner in that aspect!!), so, I guess you could say, they're still "current"... ;D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swingle_Singers
MCM electronics sells belt kits for turntables and cassette decks also. They have an excellent site.
19and41,
Thanks for the heads-up on the MCM site. I will keep that website bookmarked for when we are in the house and I can tear into the turntable to see what is needed.
Nick
Good luck with it.
Well, we have actually completed the purchase of the house. So now the modifications begin.
We will not be using the fold-away turntable, so if there is anyone on the forum that might be interested, let me know. I have pulled it out of the wall and hope to get the metal box it was mounted into the wall with extracted tomorrow. The turntable motor runs and the radio works, but the platter does not turn although the previous owner said that it did very recently. As others have said, it probably needs a belt. An original owner's manual for the turntable was inside the unit.
I have also pulled out the related intercom units in case anyone is interested in those.
Let me know,
Nick