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Old 15th Oct 2013, 3:51 pm   #1
JoshWard
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Default Argosy Record Player

Hi all,
I completed this one about a week ago but haven't had a chance to do a write up yet! This was purchased over summer from a local car boot sale by my girlfriend, from memory it was about £10 or so. I found a shilling inside from 1963 so that has offset some of the purchase price!
Argosy are not a brand I have worked with before. From what I have read on the internet it appears Argosy was a mail order brand name and the units themselves were made by Regentone/Plessey. This seems like a decent quality unit with a large loudspeaker, separate bass and treble controls, and three valves (UY85, UF89, UL84).

Cosmetically it wasn't too bad, dirty but with only a few small tears in the covering and they were only on one side. The knob brights were missing as was the platter mat. I powered it up and the amp was working to some degree but the TC8 cartridge had failed and whilst the deck turned the speedchange was seized solid.

First job was to source a platter mat. Sadly I had no luck finding a mat so instead had to buy another BSR UA8 autochanger. It was advertised as not working but when powered up it worked well! I decided to use the best bits from both decks so I used the new deck chassis combined with the tonearm, stacking arm and platter from the old deck, plus the platter mat from the new deck. The new deck had bodged motor wiring so the motor from the old deck was used. Out of the six motor mount grommets the two decks provided me with I had three usable ones. I used the softest idler and gave that a quick going over with wet and dry paper. The new deck worked well although there were a few autochanger issues fortunately these were cured by some fresh lubrication. I fitted an Acos GP91 cartridge I had in the spares box (running low on cartridges so not many more record player restorations for me!) along with a new stylus (well two actually, the first one I bought fell to bits!).

Next it was time to take a look at the amp. I changed the dodgy looking capacitors and checked over all the resistors, several were found to be out of tolerance so these were changed. Nothing else untoward was noticed so a new mains lead was fitted (3 core with the record deck earthed) and the pots were given a quick squirt of Servisol.

The cabinet was cleaned up using some foam upholstery cleaner followed by treatment with Auto Glym Vinyl & Rubber Care. The deck metalwork was cleaned up with T-Cut. The knobs were washed with warm soapy water and the glue residue from the long departed knob brights was cleaned off with T-Cut. All the trim bits were cleaned up with Brasso wadding although most of it is heavily pitted. One of the lid hinges was broken so this was repaired (just required a bit of careful metal bending!).

It all went back together easily and it works well, my girlfriend seems to be pleased with the final result as well!
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Old 15th Oct 2013, 4:55 pm   #2
newlite4
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Good work Josh. I was restoring players like this for some antique dealers last year, but my spares (cartridges and motor-mount grommets etc) began to dry up. It is not easy to bring the rexine covering back to something decent but yours looks OK as do the brass bits.
Neil
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Old 15th Oct 2013, 5:37 pm   #3
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Hi Neil,
Yes supplies are drying up and BSR SC12s now sell for over £30 and that can buy an Audio Technica AT95E which is a far better cartridge- no use for these old things though
Even secondhand cartridges for these sort of things are selling well now, and to me it's just not worth it as I like to play my records on my Lenco with an Ortofon cartridge rather than risk damaging it on a 60s portable with tracking weights of around 5g, sometimes more. I certainly won't be buying any more portable record players, I did have quite a few but have only got an HMV 2011 left now which was my first record player (ploughed up quite a few records on that!), plus a few radiograms but I only have a few LPs I am willing to play on them!

Maybe it's time to drag the HMV out from under the bench and give it the once over, sadly the platter mat has dissolved on that too

Josh.
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Old 15th Oct 2013, 6:01 pm   #4
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Hi Josh

Nice work there! And a handsome-looking machine too.

It's a great shame that of all things the cartridge is now likely to be the main consideration when restoring these players. £30 is a lot to splash out if you've bought the record player for a tenner. I'm sure Maplin used to sell those BSR carts for about £12.99 not so long ago.

I used to enjoy restoring record players but if you have half a dozen with duff original cartridges it does tend to make you pause for thought.

Not to mention the eternal quest for knob-brights

Steve
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Old 15th Oct 2013, 10:17 pm   #5
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Hello Josh- nice job there!

You might want to change that Plessey Red'n'Black too, they don't have a great reputation, though if it does dry out I'm guessing it's a cathode bypass so it'll only drop the gain a bit.
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Old 15th Oct 2013, 10:52 pm   #6
JoshWard
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Yes Steve, £30 is a lot especially if you are not even going to use it much once it's done! I enjoy restoring record players but not autochangers! Yes the BSR carts have gone up in price rather a lot over the last few years. I must admit I think it looks quite nice without the knob brights so I haven't even asked if anybody has some! I have had only two record players with working cartridges in them! One was a BSR TC8 in a McMichael portable (now sold), the other was a Garrard in a McMichael radiogram which is still in my workshop, not been used for a good few years now so bet it won't work anymore

I put the ESR meter on it Chris and it came up as OK so I have left it for now. I have had some bad ones and some good ones so will give it a stay of execution!

Josh.
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Old 16th Oct 2013, 12:41 pm   #7
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshWard View Post
I found a shilling inside from 1963 so that has offset some of the purchase price!
In those days people typically placed a shilling or a penny on top of the pickup to help it track when it wasn't set up properly. The autochanger probably chucked it off and it fell inside. Pity it wasn't a sovereign.

Jim
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Old 19th Apr 2016, 1:03 pm   #8
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Hi Josh, Just picked up the very same record player. Mine in black and white (ish).
I've just plugged it in on half power and hummmmmmmmm. So cap changing I go. I have to change the cart in this one too. Well, not change as there isn't one. Hope mine comes out as good as yours.
Gary
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Old 20th Apr 2016, 8:02 am   #9
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Looks like a nice project! Ashamed to say our one has hardly been used since I did it
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Old 15th May 2016, 2:24 pm   #10
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Exclamation Re: Argosy Record Player

Hi Y'll.
Just pulled out this Argosy to change these gawd darn Caps. Anyone have a suggestion of the value of these as shown, one has gone black and the other has been rubbed out for some reason. I have put the meter on them but don't trust the readings, they both read 1uf I see Josh has changed these in his project, Wonder what he used?
thanks guys
Gary
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Old 16th May 2016, 12:35 pm   #11
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Where are they in the circuit? A pretty good stab at the value can be made from that info.

FWIW leaky paper caps look like a higher capacitance to basic cap testers that just apply a fixed voltage and frequency ac and measure the resultant current.
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Old 17th May 2016, 1:58 pm   #12
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Sorry, I thought I'd included pic in my post. The first one is the grey one, connecting from pin3 UF89 valve to pin7 of the UL84, if I'm reading the direction of the pins right. The second is the dark brown one I think is the cathode cap from the UF89. It's connected from pin2 to chassis.
thanks
Gary
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Old 17th May 2016, 2:42 pm   #13
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

I spy a Plessey.

Lawrence.
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Old 17th May 2016, 3:04 pm   #14
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Pictures too small to see.
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Old 17th May 2016, 6:00 pm   #15
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I think your pin direction is reversed. from the bottom, clockwise from the gap is 1-9. Beware of any grounded spigot tag sitting in the gap to confuse things further.

The brown one sounds like the UF89 screen decoupler- 100n probably fine here.

The one from UF89 to UL84 is likely "that" capacitor. Again 100n should be fine. Originals may be lower capacity but it won't matter.
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Old 17th May 2016, 7:50 pm   #16
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

Thanks for that Herald1360, i thought they would be around the same value. thank you for the lesson in pin counting, lol.
Lawrence, Don't worry that Plessey's all gone now.
Thanks
Gary
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Old 17th Jun 2016, 10:48 am   #17
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Default Re: Argosy Record Player

The original cartridge is a BSR TC8M. What was it's output? I am just wondering if output of a BSR SC12H is anywhere near that of a TC8M.
There are generic clones of the SC12H out there, but they never seem to come with a mounting clip. You are lucky in that the pre-amplifier allows you to use a cartridge with a lower output.
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Old 17th Jun 2016, 4:33 pm   #18
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https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...1&postcount=15
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