[ben]

I agree entirely with you about the build. This deck seems to be a forerunner of their 1980s cassette mechs, which were almost entirely made from plastic. I had my doubts but amazingly it has held up very well. As did those cassette mechs - we used a dozen of them at work where they saw 15+ years of hard use and I only ever had to replace drive belts.

I use that GF047 at least weekly to play mostly 45s and 78s. I wanted something which could stack at least eight and had auto size detection. The flip over stylus is essential too. I have repaired half a dozen of those AG3306/22GP204,5 heads, first by gutting them and then gluing in a Chuo Denshi clone cart, later by simply removing the old ceramic element and replacing it with the guts of one of the Chuo Denshis, so I could keep using the original Philips flip over stylus. Will make a separate thread on that one day.