Magnavox 78 rpm record player & Motorola wireless record player

[radiotvnut]

Here's a late '30's-early '40's Magnavox "playfellow" 78 rpm record player that I just picked up. Looking at the schematic, this is the first one that I've ever seen where a high output crystal cartridge is driving a PP audio stage directly. I'm sure the cartridge is dead and reading the recent posting about WTS does not make me very anxious to send it in for a rebuild. So, I'll likely rig a counterbalance spring to the tonearm, install a modern ceramic 78 rpm cartridge (probably a P51-3), and I might have to add a preamp stage to the existing amp. It's been my experience that these older 78 rpm electric record players are much harder to find than the later multi-speed models, probably because they were all tossed during the '50's when LP's and 45's took over.









Next, I picked up this Motorola model 21A wireless record player from the late '30's. This is about the ugliest record player that I've ever seen; but, I didn't have any wireless record players and it was cheap. As many of you know, these contained a small transmitter that would broadcast the content of the record to a nearby AM radio. This is a two-tube model, with one active tube and the other one is a triode wired as a diode and used for the rectifier. My biggest concern is the cartridge and due to the way it mounts, along with the overall design of the record player, I may be forced into a cartridge rebuild.

[KentTeffeteller]

Nice, radiotvnut. Many of the early models were converted to 3 speed phonos or scrapped. A nice find. Worth adding a gain stage to use a modern cartridge, I think on both.