Ruco Record Player

[PsychMan]

The recent Jamboree record player thread reminded me of a similar little curiosity I picked up a while ago. Such players seem pretty rare, as are the unusual little Garrard decks in them.

Its in my "round to it" pile, but in the meantime thought Id share some pictures of it. I haven't worked out how to get into it yet, I assume the deck comes out

[PsychMan]

Continued..

I did reorientate the pictures to be the "correct" way round, seems the forum has other ideas (fixed mostly now)

[robert.copley1]

That's a nice find, be interesting to see if it's a valve or transistor model.

[trsomian]

My parents used to have a Ruco LW/MW/SW radio, which I passed on to an interested person about 25 years ago. I didn't know Ruco had made record players. What is the history of Ruco?

[PsychMan]

Only bit of info I could see online said they were based in Richmond Surrey. They must have been a very small manufacturer. This player I would guess is from the late 50s or early 60s. Do you know how old the radio was?

[trsomian]

My parents bought their first house in the late 40s, and so far as I am aware they didn't have another radio before it, so I imagine anytime from the late 40s onwards. I seem to remember that Dad said that it was made by a company owned by a friend of his, or possibly a friend of one of his brothers; they were all brought up in Hammersmith, which is not far from Richmond, so it seems plausible.

I do remember getting it out of the loft to experiment with it, and it didn't work. I replaced the dial light bulbs and it came to life. In the 90s I worked with a fellow interested in old radios, and I passed it to him. The radio was quite large, a veneered wooden box, with a double handed tuning pointer in the middle of a roughly square tuning dial/window

[Edward Huggins]

RUCO were active from 1956 to 1958 (possibly 1959) and made a very limited range of two mains record players - one used EF40, EL41 and EZ40 and a later variant used ECC83, EL84 and EZ80. Both had 6.5" diameter speakers. The autochanger deck was set at right angles to the front. I think also they made just one basic Radiogram. I was never aware of a battery player until this Post. Their main distributor was VES (Valve Exchange Service) Wholesale Services Limited, based in Acton.

[PsychMan]

Interesting. There isn't very much listed in the way of Ruco products here, but looks like this record player is the TR1

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/rucoproduc_tr1.html

Address listed as

Ruco Products (Radio) Ltd.; 197, Lower Richmond Road, Richmond, Surrey (1969).

[ms660]

Just some general info:

Ruco seems to have been connected with A.R Surtees and A.L Leeson, A.R Leeson also had a connection with Allen Components Ltd, Allen Components Ltd made stuff for the R&TV trade/industry, at one point both companies had the same address, 197 Lower Richmond Road, Richmond, Surrey, and the same telephone number, Prospect 4463.

EDIT: Post crossed.

Lawrence.

[astro63]

Here's an advert I found a while ago but can't make out which one is the valve player and which ones the battery, because Ruco used the Staar deck in a valve battery radiogram as well "Teledictor" which was 90V + 1.5V for valve heaters then the motor was 7V.

Your model is early with the BA1 deck with the joined metal bar where the idler wheel is on, that was changed before the end of 1956, do get in it and confirm if it's battery transistor, or valve

[PsychMan]

That’s a great advert, thanks for sharing that.

I managed to get inside and found a DL96 and DAF96

[Nickthedentist]

Looks like the RM listing is wrong, i.e. the wrong caption has been associated with the photo from the ad in post 10.

[astro63]

wonder what the battery voltage is for the valve model advert dont help 3 E R batteries im guessing that means Ever Ready make transistor runs from 3 E R 996 batteries

[PsychMan]

Yes, I cant see any hint on what batteries to use. Unfortunately no batteries were left inside it either.

As I understand it the BA1 runs off a 7.5v battery, so I'd imagine the other 2 were "standard" LT and HT batteries. There is one large battery holder, and 2 x 2 pin plugs (HT and LT I assume).

Ill lash something up when I get round to testing it

[astro63]

the Ruco i had years go used 90v HT 1.5v LT and the motor which was the staar deck 7.5v but couldnt tell you the battery model numbers now as long gone