supplanter64
03-27-2008, 05:14 PM
I'm a 44 year old hobbiest who has plenty enough of electronics experience to be plenty dangerous. I found this forum while searching for any reference to Radio Shack's Realistic QTA-770 quadraphonic receiver. I "inherited" it from my Dad in 1982 who bought it in 1975. It and an old 7 1/2" IRS reel to reel and a nice old Garrard turntable provided reliable entertainment for me all through college and into my professional life. Finally, about '95, the old gal started cutting in and out, and sounding so pitiful I retired her in favor of a new fangled JVC Dolby Pro Logic receiver. Boy was I disappointed! After all those years of listening to that nice sound from discrete solid state circuits instead of cold lifeless ICs and cheap digitally "enhanced" music, I just about gave up on regular music listening, only using the JVC for movies, because it just didn't do good music justice. The old receiver would be retired from service, stored in the basement for the next 13 years.
Being a guitarist and knowing basic electronics picked up over the years, I decided to try my hand at building all tube guitar amps. After building two nice little amps, I decided guitar effects pedals would be fun and certainly safer than the 300-600 volts inside one of my amps. One day I looked upon the old artifact with a foot of junk piled on top it saying to myself, "I wonder...". At first I thought, "Heh heh, there might be many nice old germanium transistors and diodes in there for pedal building." Then I decided no, I had the confidence to tackle that big box of wire circuits and switches. I could do a thorough cleaning of all the controls, switches and inspect and repair any other connections in there... and if that didn't do it, I'd take every part in there out and test it with some of my latest testing gadgets. And if that didn't work, it would be fun anyway and I could extract some good parts from it.
After carefully disassembling everything, replacing most of the bulbs, cleaning the pots and switches, and carefully cleaning some of the dust and grime out, five days later I re-assembled it. I plugged in the power, pushed the power button... and SHAZAM!... nice warm clean music poured out my old Mach 3's. My old friend was alive again! Just cleaning and a few light bulbs was all it needed.
Now I know Realistic wasn't top of the line then (and no where in the ball park since the early 80's), and tubes are for some people "perfection", and Bob Carver makes these amazing Sunfire amps that go to 11 kazillion, but to me, this box is a gem. If I could find a good discrete-4 quadraphonic turntable (at a good price) and few old CD-4 records (I have only 2 from the day), now that would be nice to have and play with. I do have multi-track digital and analog equipment to play through it, but I'm just enjoying listening to some old stuff through it again.
Anyway I've enjoyed reading some of the posts here and hope to be able to pop in from time to time and contribute something useful. I'm sure I'll be learning more than teaching.
Being a guitarist and knowing basic electronics picked up over the years, I decided to try my hand at building all tube guitar amps. After building two nice little amps, I decided guitar effects pedals would be fun and certainly safer than the 300-600 volts inside one of my amps. One day I looked upon the old artifact with a foot of junk piled on top it saying to myself, "I wonder...". At first I thought, "Heh heh, there might be many nice old germanium transistors and diodes in there for pedal building." Then I decided no, I had the confidence to tackle that big box of wire circuits and switches. I could do a thorough cleaning of all the controls, switches and inspect and repair any other connections in there... and if that didn't do it, I'd take every part in there out and test it with some of my latest testing gadgets. And if that didn't work, it would be fun anyway and I could extract some good parts from it.
After carefully disassembling everything, replacing most of the bulbs, cleaning the pots and switches, and carefully cleaning some of the dust and grime out, five days later I re-assembled it. I plugged in the power, pushed the power button... and SHAZAM!... nice warm clean music poured out my old Mach 3's. My old friend was alive again! Just cleaning and a few light bulbs was all it needed.
Now I know Realistic wasn't top of the line then (and no where in the ball park since the early 80's), and tubes are for some people "perfection", and Bob Carver makes these amazing Sunfire amps that go to 11 kazillion, but to me, this box is a gem. If I could find a good discrete-4 quadraphonic turntable (at a good price) and few old CD-4 records (I have only 2 from the day), now that would be nice to have and play with. I do have multi-track digital and analog equipment to play through it, but I'm just enjoying listening to some old stuff through it again.
Anyway I've enjoyed reading some of the posts here and hope to be able to pop in from time to time and contribute something useful. I'm sure I'll be learning more than teaching.