Restoring Magnavox AstroSonic

UniCav

New Member
Recently lost both parents and cleaning out my childhood home. Having to decide what to cram into my home and what to sell from a mid 60's house and a 70 year relationship. Among them is the Magnavox AstroSonic console stereo. This thing was such a part of my life and I'd love to have it in my music room with that auto-changer loaded up. But it needs work. Many years back Dad moved it out on a patio with no climate control. It's very dusty and fading. The radio comes on but doesn't pick up anything and very scratchy. The turntable is missing the cartridge so I haven't even considered trying to see if it runs. Opinions on restoring? Can you even get parts for the turntable? I've looked a bit on Google and eBay but not seeing anything20170921_192021-800x600.jpg 20170921_192028-800x600.jpg
 
There are 2 pages on Facebook that focus on consoles, one is "Astro Sonic", and the iother you can put in console and it will come up. They have tons of self help stuff, and can steer you towards someone to restore it if needed. The amps will need to be redone, or the very least have deoxit sprayed on them to clean up the contact points and pots. The turntable can be taken apart if you can DIY, and is pretty easy as well. The idler wheel, bearing, and grease are the biggest focus points to clean and relube.

Yours looks to be an early 70's version, but I could be wrong. I've played with a few and did semi restorations on a tube version and a SS version, which I think yours is.

The cartridges can be bought online for them as well at Voice of Music or Ebay.

Be prepared to spend anywhere from $200-400.00 for a complete restoration with the cabinet as well, but once finished, the unit should give you years of enjoyment.Finished off and depending on your market, they sell for between $199.00-$450.00.

Yours should have either a 2 way speaker or 3 way speaker system in it. I have the very 1st year Astro Sonic went SS, which is the Astro Sonic 100. They are surprisingly nice set ups when restored.
 
Great info and just what I needed to get started JFRACE thanks!

This console gave me so many hours of joy. I can recall the wonderful sound and I've hated that it's sat silently in the back patio gathering dust all these years. I brought home the little Crosley unit we bought my folks several years back and put a new belt on it but the sound is just horrible.

I can do a lot of the work myself but needed to know where to start and if it could even be done. Price range is certainly doable. I'll hit up the FB page right away!
 
Great info and just what I needed to get started JFRACE thanks!

This console gave me so many hours of joy. I can recall the wonderful sound and I've hated that it's sat silently in the back patio gathering dust all these years. I brought home the little Crosley unit we bought my folks several years back and put a new belt on it but the sound is just horrible.

I can do a lot of the work myself but needed to know where to start and if it could even be done. Price range is certainly doable. I'll hit up the FB page right away!
I am in several Facebook groups for old console stereos.This is the biggest and the best.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Console.Stereo.Club/
 
OK guys I still need some help and the FB groups haven't gotten me there. I can't seem to nail down a schematic or parts list to get the capacitor list and I can't see many of the cap values without removing them from the boards first which would create more problems. I finally figured out it's a model 2ST677 and the chassis number is 214-14-00. My Micromatic Turntable is a W620. Can anyone point me at a cap list, the right cartridge and needle?
 
I'm surprised the groups didn't come up with any info. I'm not that advanced to be able to help on those issues, but your cartridge should have a removable stylus. Do you have any pics of it available?
 
Roger's site I got a little more tech commentary last night. I made a huge blunder and mis-quoted a post from here that I found late yesterday. http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/1965-magnavox-astro-sonic-need-advice.468183/page-2 I'm still learning the different boards and units and I mixed up Coupling caps with Crossover caps. RWood lists the caps needed and shared this PDF from another thread http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?attachments/maganvox-asto-sonic-pdf.444535/ which shows a great image of the Preamp board and points out the caps, and he lists the Coupling caps. That board and the 5 capacitors in the middle of the chassis aren't hard to get to, so if I replace those 14 along with the 2 Crossover caps I may get lucky and be good to go.
 
Here's what I'm looking at in my stylus. I took the whole cartridge out when the unit quit when I was probably an early teen. Probably intended to take it to Woolco and get a replacement, then for whatever reason it didn't happen and later the unit just got dropped back into the console and never fixed. V-M suggested a 256 or 257D cartridge might work? I'm not sure if the bracket looks right from the photo but that gray-green cartridge sure looks like the image in my head.20171211_154439 (Small).jpg 20171211_154509 (Small).jpg MagCartCompare.JPG
 
A friend of mine has one of those which also belonged to his parents. It was always properly taken care of. Recently I cleaned the contacts in the switches with Deoxit, cleaned and lubed the turntable, installed a new stylus in to the cartridge and the entire system works and sounds great. It has an excellent speaker system and my friend really enjoys it. I recommend you do the same thing before you change out more capacitors. Your system may not need it.
 
Those cartridges in the photo look like the ones for the older Magnavox Micromatics to me. They screw in from the top. Yours screws in from the bottom. Did you send the photo to of the tonearm head to Gary @ voiceofmusic?
I would have guessed it's either this:
http://www.thevoiceofmusic.com/cata...fgNameCartridges&MfgName=Magnavox&Categories=
or this:
http://www.thevoiceofmusic.com/catalog/part_detail.asp?PID=P3869

That's from Gary. He seems to be really drawing a blank on mine for some reason.
 
I'm having a devil of a time finding caps, the problem seems to be that they're all axial. Do you guys just swap out with radial caps? DigiKey and Mouser don't have any of them in stock. Contacted a US seller on eBay, had a nice conversation with the guy overall but he corrected me on typing MFD instead of uF for values, then told me all he had was radial and I must not understand the difference, asked for a schematic, told me he rebuilds old radios, told me 15 ways to draw my own schematic and rig up testing methods, then basically told me good luck LOL. Yea as I type this it's starting to really piss me off. I've contacted another couple vendors this morning.
 
I did finally get everything but the crossover caps from Mouser. Can't seem to find anything around 8uf-10uf Non-Polarized that's rated less than 200V. Most seem to be 250-450V. is that OK or do I need to keep looking for something closer to 50V?
 
Guy's is it safe to soak the rubber top of the platter and the idler/rubber parts in hot water with dish soap? Or what else should be used?
For those not following my posts on Facebook, I have the couplings/crossovers and preamp board (everything on bottom of chassis) recapped and was able to play my phone through the tape inputs. I've ordered caps for the Tuner and MPX board. I'm trying to relocate the link to the service manual I found in here somewhere that showed how to reinstall/calibrate the tuner indicator cable because that's the part that scares me the most. I have received the cartridge kit from V-M and today I'm working on tearing down and reworking the turntable. I'm following this guide http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/micromatic-teardown-rebuild.213911/
Looks like mine but very first thing is I don't have all those spacers/cups around my platter bearing. It was bearing, flat washer, dimpled washer.
 
Well I am beat at this point. I've disassembled, cleaned, lubed, put it all back together. TWICE. It doesn't run. The platter never turns. If I flip the idler wheel a little or turn the tonearm all the way over it will go through the startup cycle and then shut itself off or it will go through the startup and then the idler just locks up and nothing will move. I dropped a tiny spacer from underneath the bottom wheel and went through the 2nd disassembly and reassembly with it in there. That little wheel is in the right spot by the center of the bottom wheel. The tonearm is always sprung upwards. I don't have my cartridge in so I don't know if that's got something to do with it (no weight) or not but dang it would need to be heavy to hold it down. I've gone through it several times looking for something out of place and I just can't see it. Any suggestions?
 
Well I've made progress. I had a detached retina a week ago and I'm working with one eye but I was able to tinker with the 2 W620 MicroMatic Turntables I have. Thought I'd post everything and see if anyone has suggestions where to go from here.

My original TT I've torn down and cleaned and lubed and reassembled, then down and back again about 6 times trying to find my problem. It went from seeking but not spinning, to spinning but not seeking. Today I went through it again. I had a spacer on the reject/seek wheel on the bottom not the top, so it was catching on the frame. I got that fixed. The tonearm doesn't lift enough to catch the edge of the record. I kept looking to see if I got something in wrong and finally loosened the lock nut and adjusted the lift and that seems to be working. BUT, first thing I did when I lifted it out of the cabinet weeks ago was snatch the entire spindle out and ruin the tiny spring on the drop cam, so after messing with it all this time it just won't drop anymore. After going through the motions with a little help, once the tonearm gets to the center of the record it won't detect that it's there and seek back again, so still things are out of adjustment or out of place. PLUS I have yet to even think about putting the cartridge I bought in so the weight is all off and I don't want to even unbox the thing at this point.

The other turntable I bought locally I figured out that the tonearm seek clutch is frozen, so it's only lifting, bumping a tiny bit and dropping where the 33 edge would be. It has a working cartridge and spins. I THINK if I could get the clutch freed up so it will seek properly I may have a working unit, but I'm very nervous about messing with it. I think at this point it's my best option but can anyone suggest how to work on the clutch without destroying the whole works?
 
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