Blue Califone 1420K from my elementary school

[radiotvnut]

A couple of months ago, I spotted this blue Califone 1420K classroom record player at the flea market. They wanted $50 for the player and several educational LP's. I lifted the lid and discovered that the tonearm was busted off. I asked the owners of the flea market to call the owner and see what she'd do on the price. She swore nothing was wrong with it and wouldn't budge on the price.

I then noticed that the record player and records were once property of my old elementary school. Heck, even the name of my first grade teacher was written inside the lid. At that point, I wanted it for sentimental reasons; but, not bad enough to pay $50.

Today, I was back in there and asked them to call her again. She said that she looked at the player and saw where the tonearm was broken; but, said it wasn't that way when she left it there. She agreed to sell the player and the records for $30. Given it's condition, that's about $25 more than it was worth and $25 more than I'd normally pay; but, since this unit has a little bit of sentimental meaning, I went ahead and got it. If it didn't have sentimental meaning, I"d probably junk it for parts.

Not only is the tonearm busted off, the center bearing is loose (I can probably JB Weld it back in place). If that does not work out, it shouldn't be too hard to find a 4-speed Alliance drive mechanism. The tonearm will be much harder to find. I opened it up and it looks to be from '74 and this is the baby model with the smaller rear firing speaker.

[radiotvnut]

Someone on ARF has a tonearm for me and they are sending it to me one day this week.

The bad news is that I talked to someone from my local school district to see if they had any more record players. He assured me that no record players remained in the district and that they, along with other outdated electronics, went to an electronics recycler (nice, crush it and send it to china instead of letting someone who could actually use the stuff have it). He added that he didn't understand how the record player that I found made it's way off campus. At that point, I experienced an "oh, crap! - they're going to demand this record player back so they can throw it away" moment. My response was that maybe the unit wasn't on inventory or was one that was sold at auction, many years ago.

I've already torn into it and found one almost dried out electrolytic capacitor in the amp. I'm about to tear the drive mechanism apart and service it. The idler wheel, a Walsco 1472-01, has cracked rubber and will need to be rebuilt.

I'm very happy to have this unit, especially since I might have the only surviving example of a record player from my school district. Now, let's hope I don't get a knock on the door, from them wanting it back.