Philips LFH 0084 dictating machine.

[Techman]

I got asked to have a look at one of these at the weekend, it had low/no sound on playback. It apparently briefly had audio, but after its owner had spent hours cleaning old belt goo and replacing belts, there was then little to no audio. He did admit to me that he'd banged it down on the table in frustration which seemed to have caused some issues with it lacing and forward winding, but that would be a problem that he would look at himself, it was the electronic fault that he needed help with.

After finding a circuit diagram, the fault was soon tracked down to coupling capacitor C6 (as shown in part circuit diagram in last picture below), with signal injection from the old Advance H1 signal generator. It's good to work on a good old solid state circuit like this with no DC coupling of stages - just like a valve amp.

Before seeing this unit, he'd asked me about it and said that perhaps it was capacitor trouble and that he'd been all round the board, re-soldering joints to rule out dry joints. I'd said that it was probably more likely to be a transistor due to capacitor trouble being more likely in valved units. However, when I saw the small low value electrolytic, I wasn't surprised that it was to blame - it was a 1.6uf. I had a look for a replacement from my 'stock' and the nearest I had was something like 2.2uf, so near enough. I powered up the soldering iron and told him that he could remove the old part and fit the replacement himself. He reckoned that he would just snip the old part out and fit the replacement on the print side of the board until he realised that the bottom of the case wouldn't fit back on with it there, so he had to do it the proper way!

There's likely to be one or two other capacitors in there that could possibly give problems, but he just wanted the unit up and running so that he could play the very strange recordings that were on the tapes that came with it. I was rewarded in the usual way from the owner of the machine with gifts in the shape of an old valve radio with a broken case and an old Fidelity tape recorder - I like 'toys' rather than money if it's a relatively simple repair such as the above, although it does add to the 'clutter', but it's all good fun! He said that I'd probably just scrap the radio for its valves and parts, and I said that would most likely be the case, but the look he gave me when he said this indicated that he half suspected that I'd probably repair it - like that HMV basket case gramophone that he gave me in return for repairing a previous small tape recorder for him last year - I think he was amazed to see it in the house working, stuck back together and playing records! I didn't really look at the radio until after he'd gone and assumed it was just an early 50s bashed up Bakelite cased AM only radio and would be useful in parts only, but when I looked closer, it was an AM/FM set, so probably going to have some repair/restoration done on it after all - that will be in another thread, though.

One last thing about the dictation machine is that as soon as I saw it I remembered that I once had three of them many years ago that I'd been given. I can't remember where they came from or what happened to them - they must have got lost along the way! From memory though, I seem to think that those tapes come in little flat tins, and if they do, then it rings a bell that I've seen them somewhere, possibly in the loft, so I may still have all the tapes, even though I no longer have the recorders and their accessories, which probably got dumped/lost during a move years ago.

Pictures of the recorder in question below:-

[ben]

Interesting write up. I also used to have one of these, from a clearout of a relative's work place. I think this and the Grundig Stenorette were the main office tape formats of the era. Like your acquaintance I always pick up this sort of thing , partly for the odd home recordings on the tapes for my Found Tape Archive!

The proto-cassette tapes are indeed supplied metal cans, I recently bought a couple online out of curiosity, sadly blanks!

[Refugee]

I have got one of those.
The tapes do indeed come in grey tins.
Have you spotted how they dealt with the 50/60 hertz mains frequency?
Yours looks like all of the frequency mechanism is mounted directly on the motor but mine is partly on the inside of the back cover.
Yours looks a little bit more modern than mine.
I have not powered it up for about 15 years.

[Techman]

As a youngster I remember having one of those valved Grundig Stenorettes.

I expect I'll come across those tapes in the tins when I'm looking for something else in the loft - that is if I do still actually have them and it's not just a memory from years ago, which I don't think it is. At least I know where there's a working machine to try them on if I do find them - I've no idea what, if anything, was recorded on them.

The owner of the Philips machine had sussed out that 50/60 Hz adjustment and was telling me about it. The recordings had both a male and female person on the tape and the male voice seemed a little strange as if it was playing back slightly too slow, however, we decided in the end that it was just a person with a strange voice!

[Refugee]

The tapes with mine have got recordings of my late father practicing a language course.