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Old 13th May 2014, 1:44 pm   #1
Radio_Dave
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Default 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

The Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre was launched in 1965. It has a 4” wide magnetic tape with 126 tracks, each of 22 minutes long, giving a total playing time of over 46 hours. I won’t bore you with all its history and features as there’s an excellent website here that can tell you everything about it.

I’ve been working on this Schaub Lorenz 5001, on and off, for the last 6 months. Initially it was completely dead but replacing two internal fuses started to bring it back to life. The AM tuning capacitor was seized and the FM one only just moved. Careful application of Plus Gas followed by some 3 in 1 oil got them and the radio working again.

In the past the tape had snapped off from its leader and had been very badly repaired. Splicing the 4” tape was not easy, without a splicing block, but I managed it eventually!

I’d just brought one of those Chinese component testers and it did a great job of finding several capacitors with high ESR or no capacitance at all.

The tape deck was refusing to work so I removed, cleaned and tested all the relays on the control board PCB. Now it started to show sign of life. It would play to the end of the track and then rewind but it would not advance to the next track and play. This is a common problem caused by a faulty LDR that detects the start of the tape, through the transparent leader. I couldn’t find the original Valvo LDR05’s but I could get some LDR03’s, which have the same electrical characteristics. The second LDR, used for the recording level, was also found to be faulty and was replaced at the same time.

It now played, rewound and played the next track, as it should, but record did not work. I removed and checked the mercury wetted relay, which switches the play head to record and found it to be faulty. These are now unobtainable, so I replaced it with a small 12V PCB relay. Unfortunately, record still did not work. Eventually I found the problem to be a dry joint on the erase head oscillating coil and a faulty AC128.

The cabinet was just cleaned and wax polished. It’s what the factory called the “silver” version but, in reality, the front is just painted “horrible grey”. These cabinets aren’t exactly attractive and I didn’t really want to hide the, far more interesting, workings inside it… but I suppose it keeps the dust off.

I’ve made a Youtube video of it here, doing various things and there are some pictures below

Regards
David
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Old 13th May 2014, 5:41 pm   #2
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Well done, good to know another of these fine machines is back to life. I've had one for several years but have yet to even power it up, your example has inspired me to take the plunge!
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Old 13th May 2014, 7:24 pm   #3
mark pirate
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Well done for getting it to work again, I was given one many years ago, but could never get it to work properly
I do remember it having loads of 1960's music on it, all recorded from the radio!

Actually, I think your unit looks rather smart in grey, mine had a teak front.

Mark
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Old 16th May 2014, 12:24 pm   #4
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Coincidentally, when reading through the Nov 1967 edition of Wireless World yesterday I found a Laskey's ad offering these for £61.19.0! They say the full price was over £200!!
Even at the offer price that was alot of money then.
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Old 16th May 2014, 12:37 pm   #5
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

They'd gone up to 89gns (£93.45) by 1969.

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...t=53809&page=2

There was one at NVCF last Sunday. I never realised how big they were.

Keith
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Old 16th May 2014, 12:41 pm   #6
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

I saw that one, it had some faults but it was sold. I don't know if it fetched the £75 the seller was asking.
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Old 16th May 2014, 1:49 pm   #7
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

I'm sure I've read somewhere they were launched in 1965 at over £500. Terrible unreliability and the compact cassette tape saw the prices tumble! After two years they were out of production.

This one cost me the princely sum of £5.50, on eBay. How's that for depreciation.

David
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Old 15th Jan 2015, 1:53 pm   #8
Jimmyhaflinger
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

i saw one for sale locally, i'm considering buying it but it's pretty expensive at 100 euros and the owner says the tape is snapped so only the radio works

i'm mainly interested in it as a very unusual tape recorder that may also contain some nice historical recordings, so would you buy it knowing the tape is snapped? is it easy to splice?
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Old 15th Jan 2015, 3:57 pm   #9
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Altogether I have three of these music centres. Two had the leader tape torn from the spool and one had snapped the join between the tape and the leader. All had been caused because mechanism to stop the tape had failed, which is a common fault. Luckily I managed to repair them all.

I do think the price is very high though.

David
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Old 15th Jan 2015, 8:42 pm   #10
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

well, the price can likely be talked down a bit, and would be acceptable if the machine is repairable as these are insanely rare here in Italy

on the other hand i did read somewhere on the web that these machines sometimes do wind the tape unevenly and if the reel gets excessively out of shape, the tape scrapes violently on surrounding parts during rewinding and gets shredded
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Old 20th Jan 2015, 1:47 am   #11
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

For those who have one (or more!) of these there is the complete service manual available here:

http://www.file-upload.net/download-...anual.pdf.html

In 3 languages including English.

Cheers,

Peter
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Old 30th Jan 2015, 9:59 pm   #12
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

I'd need the manual, but the page wants me to download an .exe file and my antivirus is blocking it as it says it's infected
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Old 31st Jan 2015, 12:29 am   #13
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Try clicking on the Blue download button. It instantly downloads the .pdf to my iPad ok. Have also successfully download and saved the .pdf on XP PC without problems.

Peter
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Old 31st Jan 2015, 12:35 am   #14
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Actually the page my link goes to appears to vary on access. If you don't get the .pdf when pressing the blue download button then close the page and try again.

Peter
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Old 31st Jan 2015, 2:07 am   #15
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

I've just tried, and it does go to a PDF (and says thankyou for downloading!)
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 11:21 am   #16
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

If anyone is searching for some LDR05s, it looks like this place has them in stock ....

http://www.reichelt.nl/Photo-Diodes-...ARTICLE=10207&

I don't have any experience with this supplier as yet, but I thought I'd share my finding with you all.

Regards,

Andy
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 11:29 am   #17
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

By the way, I forgot to say that I'm a bit confused about normal behaviour of these machines.

(1) When coming to the end of the tape and indeed to the start upon re-wind, if the action to spool is initiated by a gear/contact arrangement, what is the purposes of the LDR? It's just that mine never spools far enough for me to see the actual clear leader.

(2) Having pressed the stop button after making a short snippet recording of something, it rewinds. What's supposed to happen when playing it back? Is it supposed to just stop at the end of said recording or does it continually rewind? If it's the latter, then how is it possible to continue to record on the rest of the track or are you supposed to be really fast on the pause button before the tone comes along?

(3) On a fully functional machine, it is supposed to rewind and advance to the next track, re-wind and re-play the track just played or re-wind and stop? When does is move onto the next track - at the end of the tape or at the end of re-wind? What happens at the end of the last track?

All interesting stuff.

Regards,

Andy
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 4:07 pm   #18
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Hi Andy, Thanks for the link.

Quote:
Originally Posted by af024 View Post
(1) When coming to the end of the tape and indeed to the start upon re-wind, if the action to spool is initiated by a gear/contact arrangement, what is the purposes of the LDR? It's just that mine never spools far enough for me to see the actual clear leader.
When stop is pressed the machine rewinds and the mechanical switches are used to stop it. The tape is then advanced to the beginning of the tape, ready to be played again, by the LDR detecting the join between the transparent leader tape and the start of the magnetic tape.
Quote:
Originally Posted by af024 View Post
(2) Having pressed the stop button after making a short snippet recording of something, it rewinds. What's supposed to happen when playing it back? Is it supposed to just stop at the end of said recording or does it continually rewind? If it's the latter, then how is it possible to continue to record on the rest of the track or are you supposed to be really fast on the pause button before the tone comes along?
The machine should record a audible tone at the end of a partially recorded track. This should then be detected and start an early rewind. I you want to continue using a track with recordings on it you have to press record before the audible tone starts
Quote:
Originally Posted by af024 View Post
(3) On a fully functional machine, it is supposed to rewind and advance to the next track, re-wind and re-play the track just played or re-wind and stop? When does is move onto the next track - at the end of the tape or at the end of re-wind? What happens at the end of the last track?
It's supposed to automatically advance to the next track until it gets to the last one, then it just keeps repeating it.

Regards
David
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 4:44 pm   #19
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Hello David,

My pleasure on the link. Hopefully the supplier has the genuine article if needed.

Thank you for the points of clarification.

I guess I need to do some fault finding then as I've never seen it wind far enough to get to the transparent leader. It also doesn't advance. Is it supposed to advance prior to rewinding or once it gets back to the start?

I would imagine that it's a bit of a game trying to adjust the mechanical switches. It could spell disaster of course.

Thank you.

Andy
PS Is the tone audible or does is use another track perhaps?
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Old 31st Aug 2015, 8:05 pm   #20
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Default Re: 1965 Schaub Lorenz 5001 Music Centre

Quote:
Originally Posted by af024 View Post
Is it supposed to advance prior to rewinding or once it gets back to the start?
It advances at the end of a track.

If you adjust the timing gears do it a little at a time.

David
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