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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 7th Jan 2020, 6:42 pm   #1
mark_in_manc
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Default Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Hi folks

I just picked up a really sticky (!) one of these from a pile of house-clearance by the side of the road - either a fly tip or something waiting for council pickup. And it works - on FM really well, in fact R3 reception on the 1/3 of a telescopic aerial it still possesses, is maybe better than anything else in the house. MW is hit and miss, so I'll have a go at the wavechange switch with servisol. Capstan unsurprisingly does not rotate, although the motor sounds like it works, so it will be coming apart for belts once all the sticky goo is cleaned off the outside. It's in a very fetching brown plastic, cream tuning scale, orange highlight text colour scheme, which is very 1978. Here's a pic of a clean one at the radio museum - mine seems a bit less silver and a bit more brown.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/hitach...trk_5280e.html

I'm really pleased about this as at Christmas I realised we no longer have a portable cassette player, and I was unable to play the cassette we found of my wife's late father to the rest of her siblings when we were visiting. Well, hopefully we'll be able to set that right when we visit them all again in the summer.
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Old 11th Jan 2020, 12:01 am   #2
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Well saved, Mark! I picked up a virtually identical one from a local junk shop about 2 years ago. It too was sticky, must have been in a kitchen. The only thing I still need to revist is the rec-playback internal slide switch, it is still noisy.
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Old 11th Jan 2020, 4:51 pm   #3
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Thanks Ben; well, I got a bit further. For reasons which I guess will be familiar to those who hang out in this part of the forum (but not to me - it must be 30 years since I had a tape deck apart) the inside was about as sticky as the outside. Acetone seemed to help get the belt goo off everything - oddly the main capstan belt had gone and the take-up spool drive belt, but not the tape counter.

For future reference for anyone - the main capstan belt is flat, 4mmx250-ish (bit shorter might be OK, wouldn't go much longer), takeup spool drive is a square belt about 194 total length, and tape counter is another square belt about 182mm total length. I bought the flat belt and an assortment of other ones reasonably off ebay from a bloke in Portsmouth.

Setting the head azimuth is a bit of a pain - there's a cutout in the case to get at the screw when the head comes down in 'play', but this is covered by the tape 'drawer' in its closed position. There's no room to put a tape in while the drawer is open, and no easy way to take the drawer out and slip a tape in while you set it (something came back about a mate's Sharp (?) ghetto blaster from a million years ago which did that).

So all one can do is choose a pre-recorded cassette whose line-up has a chance of being right, twiddle the screw 1/4 turn, and stick the tape back in to try it. This reminds me of a-b testing when I worked in acoustics - if you can't hang on in memory to the difference in the 2 or 3 seconds you need to swap over, is it really worth having?
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Old 11th Jan 2020, 4:58 pm   #4
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

On most cassette players like this, usually the cassette lid is removable when it's in the open position, usually some tabs to push to release it or pushing in the stop arms.

Lawrence.

Last edited by ms660; 11th Jan 2020 at 5:21 pm. Reason: word change
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Old 11th Jan 2020, 5:33 pm   #5
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Missed the edit time, I meant pushing in the sides.

Lawrence.
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Old 11th Jan 2020, 5:36 pm   #6
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

I found a manual on hi-fi engine, with a single 'diagram' (more a sketch) which suggests doing something with some tweezers! But I can't work it out. I'd better stop for now before I break something.
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Old 14th Mar 2020, 11:40 am   #7
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

I'm at the end of this - all is working - but I noticed something about the transparent cover of the tuning scale which I thought folks might like to see. I'm glad to have saved this, seeing as its ownership appears to have meant something to the bloke who once bought it (and what a steady hand he had!)
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 3:40 pm   #8
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Thread Re-opened at mark_in_manc's request

Cheers

Mike T
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 3:50 pm   #9
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Wow, worth saving for that alone ��
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 5:13 pm   #10
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

I thought so too Nick. unfortunately it worked really well for a while, and now has a fault which I don’t understand. With the mono button depressed, all is well, but selecting stereo means the volume rises considerably and something is overdriven into distortion. The stereo indicator light remains lit in both situations.

It might be daft to raise this, as I don’t even have a circuit diagram yet, and the fault may be entirely specific to this chassis and perhaps my individual radio. but just in case, I thought I would ask. Thanks, mark

Edit to add - this is in use rather than a collection, so I’d like to fix it. Also, perhaps this is my chance to learn something about rf and fm!
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 6:17 pm   #11
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

This was my first ever 'ghetto blaster' and one I took away to sea (merchant navy) in the late 70's early 80's. I've seen a few on eBay and speculated on purchasing one for the usual nostalgic reasons.

I don't know why they are 'suddenly' appearing everywhere though?
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 7:57 pm   #12
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Perhaps the original owners from 40 years ago, errr, no longer need a radio?

I've found a manual and circuit diagram on hi-fi engine. There's quite a lot going on! So far the mono switch (S5-1) seems to just short out the two outputs of what I think is the chip (IC301) which appears to be the stereo multiplex decoder. I'm now trawling the sheet looking for a S5-2 which does something else, in case that switch is multi-ganged. I think this may start out as a bunch of random voltage checks now I have a sheet to check against, perhaps working around that area as this is the only clue I have so far.
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 9:04 pm   #13
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

You have probably found it by now.

S5-2 in mono position connects the pre-amp output signals going to the inputs of the line amplifier IC402 together.

David
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Old 7th Jan 2021, 10:39 pm   #14
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

I hadn't found it (had somewhere else to be this evening - virtually, I stress!) so - thanks very much! I'll sleep on why that switch cuts the gain. I might even put the scope on it tomorrow.

ETA - Actually, now you found that I ought to put a tape in it and see if the mono switch cuts the excess gain on tape, as well as radio. That might narrow it down a bit.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 11:12 am   #15
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Well, on tape the 'mono' switch indeed makes things mono - and nothing more. So it looks like something around S5-1 is the issue. In another flash of inspiration (or obvious thing I might have thought of already) I had a mess with the balance control. In 'stereo' the radio tries to drive a very loud, distorted signal all through the left channel with nothing much in the right; the presence of a signal in both channels on 'mono' will just be down to S5-2, but shorting the L&R outputs of the stereo decoder chip (which is what S5-1 does) seems to cut the gain and reduce distortion too.

Since I'm not going to be able to do anything about the chip itself, I have to hope there's something funny about its power supply. In 1978 Hitachi thought it worth telling me what voltages to expect on what pins, so that's good. Now I have to take it apart and find it, but they even gave me a component layout so that might not be impossible.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 1:04 pm   #16
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Default Re: Hitachi TRK 5280E stereo radio cassette

Quote:
Originally Posted by mark_in_manc View Post
Perhaps the original owners from 40 years ago, errr, no longer need a radio?
You mean they stream from the internet on their mobiles now?

Only joking, I thought the same, but Googling the chap's name brought up nothing. Shame he didn't add his Christian name.

N.
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