Motorola 3-Channel Saved From Dump!

[holmesuser01]

I was at the thrift store the other day and found a Motorola SK39M8 3-Channel stereo in a solid mahogany cabinet by Drexel. It was sitting by the doors to the dumpster. I knew its fate. I finagled with the store manager, and got the thing for $5. It weighed alot more than I thought it would.


Heres the big glitch. Somewhere, the cabinet top was ripped off and destroyed. We have the piano hinge, and the tensioning lift springs, so all I need is to find a suitable lid for my cabinet, which, has only one light scratch on the rest of the carved wood.

The only real problem with this unit was the dirty controls, which responded well to de-oxit spray. All of the tubes are original, save one, the 5U4GB which is a Tung-Sol. I have ordered 6 capacitors for the amp itself. 2 get noticably warm after a few minutes, but it plays well after a soft-start.

I had to make room for it in the house, so, it sat in the back of my covered truck for several days. While there, I pulled the V-M turntable, and cleaned and lubed it for all it is worth. The original Sonotone cartridge was in the tonearm, but I temporarily replaced it witn a Varco cartridge.

Inside the stereo were lots of leaves and pine needles. This thing sat out in the weather for awhile, and I'm glad I didnt run it before I vacuumed it out!

Now its clean. Turntable works, and the tuner is sensitive on both AM and FM. I DID pull and test all of the tubes in the amplifier chassis, and all of them test at almost 100% on my Sencore tester.

I polished up all the gold trim on the tuner and turntable. It all looks like new.

Im thinking of just putting some lemon oil on the cabinet. It looks pretty good as it sits, but the oil would make it sparkle!

3-Channels. I guess this is Motorolas way to be cheap and look good too. It has one 15" woofer, and 2 hinged doors that open to expose the left and right midranges and tweeters mounted there. The audio outputs are push-pull 6BQ5's and the preamps are 12AX7's from Holland with Motorola in red lettering on them.

Pictures will follow at a later time. Right now, its playing under supervision to let the cabinet dry out. I can smell some moisture as the cabinet gets warm.

Its vintage 1960. I've never seen another one like it.

I just couldn't let it go to the dump, broken lid and all!

Anybody got one of these things in their collections?

Bruce