Audiotronics | 195? | 89T Cartridge | Built-in Speaker or Line Out
A buddy of mine got a hold of me in like June or July of this year. The place he was working for had this old record player that just kinda died on them and they wanted someone to fix it. Said buddy knew that I liked working on old crap so he pitched it to me and I couldn't turn it down.
The Audiotronics 312T is a neat little solid-state classroom record player. It's got a fairly loud speaker, a decent sound for how old it is, all the bells and whistles of something of the era, playback speeds from 16 to 78rpm, and a nice little carry handle to lug it all around by!
| Front | Schematic | Power Cap | Other Guts |
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So what was wrong with this? Well, simply enough, the amp was weak and the volume pot was shot.
To solve the amp being weak, well the transistors were all fine so I figured it was capacitors. The big 'ol power input cap was meauring about 35% low, the 10uf caps were measuring 5.8uF at best, and the 100uF caps were measuring only 73uF. This thing has seen use almost every year since it was bought by my understanding, there haven't been any long periods without power, so I didn't think this was a situation of stuff needing reformed and I just nuked out the old caps to be replaced by brand new ones.
When I say "the volume pot was shot" I really do mean it, look at this thing! I replaced it with a modern one (without a center tap, it's okay because said center tap only existed for kinda auto-balancing tone but the volume they set this to overrides said center tap making it a worthless feature) and who would've guessed that I wouldn't have issues with stuff dropping out any more? heh.
We got everything back to the owners of the player, a really cool joint near Brookville PA called Quiet Creek Herb Farm, before hitting up the October '23 VCF Swap Meet as it was on the path of our drive. If you're ever in the area I'd recommend giving it a stop, they've got a neat little shop with all sorts of neat herb-based things as well as a good chunk of property to hike! My buddy gave Noelle and I a tour of the grounds, it was a great way to spend an hour and it was really neat learning about all the different things they grew!