Anyone ever hear of 'claricon'?

quaddriver

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Father in law found out I am into fixin vintage stuff and wants me to move his collection he had from the 60's 70's, aside from a sx-780 and a teac r2r/amp combo, there is an odd garrard? turntable, some odd speakers and this 70wpc SS amp from 'claricon' (36-175)

I told him I will likely refresh (caps and small trannys) the teac and amp, clean up and tune the 780..its not the money, he wants it to go to a good home for someone who will use it like he did way back when...but the first step is to locate some info. each item he has, has the MINT condition manuals to boot! with schematics...

(this teac r2r/amp stereo center thingy is a LOT like the sony tc-230 that I have, both seem to be from the mid-lates 60's. about 5-10wpc, will run a phono, tuner and tape deck from the front panels - its even in some sort of a case - pretty cool. I wish I could start on it sooner, but I got a couple kenwoods and a nikko in the pipeline...)
 
I bought a claricon at a garage sale bout 4years ago. Seller said it was from 1967 some aztec speakers came with it. I had it before I started to criticly listen to a stereo so I can't comment on imaging etc but I was less then thrilled with the set up. I only used it with the aztec speakers so that could have been the problem.
 
my first R2R (as a child!)... was a Claricon 3" portable. Talk about memories...
Japanese, is all I can tell you.

As noted above, there was (is?) also a Clarion company, better known for car stereo IMO.
 
I snagged an old FM Tube tuner from Claricon back in High School. It didn't leave much of an impression on me and sold it on ebay. Couldn't really find anything useful on the web about Claricon either. So I have my doubts that its very good, but I could be wrong.
- Mike
 
There are some Claricon speakers that just went up on an auction site - some decent pics of the somewhat thrashed speakers - label says "Claricon Products Elizabeth NJ Japan"
 
I have a Claricon 8 Track Deck in my closet. Had to go take a second look to make sure it was Claricon and not Clarion. All it says on the back is "Claricon Products Division of AMD Electronics, Inc., Elizabeth, NJ - Made In Japan".
 
Yeah, a friend of mine has an old Claricon receiver/turntable combo that actually sounds pretty good, and it's a pretty heavy unit.
 
Hey I was going to start a new thread about my Claricon speakers. This thread was the first thing that came up on Google as I attempted to research that name.

I got this pair of Claricon 87-345 bookshelf speakers about a month ago at a thrift I don't usually stop at for $3.99. I just loved the look of them. Real wood veneer too. For that price I didn't care what they sounded like- I could always put something better in those cool looking cabinets if I wanted too.

Anyway I needed to give my Sansui preamp a deoxit treatment today so I thought it would be a good time to try out the Claricons. So I set up on a card table in the garage my mp3 player hooked to the Sansui hooked to my $15 Accurian amp hooked to the Claricons. They sounded rather pleasant actually. Nothing exceptional but definitely decent vintage mid-fi. A good overall tone balance, unexceptional as far as apparent efficiency, power handling, and frequency response (as subjectively judged by my none-too-critical ears).

The only issue is those plastic horns (which look like they're just stuck over a paper tweeter with a screen over it) are a little loose in the cabinets so there is some buzzing if you you give it much volume. I'll see if that can be cured with some window screen spline or rope putty or something.

Too bad there doesn't seem to be any way to access the drivers without damaging the cabinets. If someone really wanted to get inside these what would anyone recommend? The only thing I could think of to do would be cut out the back panel with a saber saw, then put on a new removable back panel.

Anyway I'm glad I found them I think they'll be part of a cool 70s system.
Any guesses on the vintage by the way?
 

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...I've looked at some nice looking Sankyo tape decks before. Another legitimate manufacturer, of pretty good stuff; I guess they never got out of Sanyo's and Onkyo's shadows.
 
I bought a circa 1970 Claricon 215 tuner last week for $8.00. Happy because it looks neat and practically new, and it was CHEAP.
 
Those speakers look to be about 1970-73 to me. Probably the kind of thing you would find at a home appliance/furniture store at the time.
 
Hey I was going to start a new thread about my Claricon speakers. This thread was the first thing that came up on Google as I attempted to research that name.

I got this pair of Claricon 87-345 bookshelf speakers about a month ago at a thrift I don't usually stop at for $3.99. I just loved the look of them. Real wood veneer too. For that price I didn't care what they sounded like- I could always put something better in those cool looking cabinets if I wanted too.

Anyway I needed to give my Sansui preamp a deoxit treatment today so I thought it would be a good time to try out the Claricons. So I set up on a card table in the garage my mp3 player hooked to the Sansui hooked to my $15 Accurian amp hooked to the Claricons. They sounded rather pleasant actually. Nothing exceptional but definitely decent vintage mid-fi. A good overall tone balance, unexceptional as far as apparent efficiency, power handling, and frequency response (as subjectively judged by my none-too-critical ears).

The only issue is those plastic horns (which look like they're just stuck over a paper tweeter with a screen over it) are a little loose in the cabinets so there is some buzzing if you you give it much volume. I'll see if that can be cured with some window screen spline or rope putty or something.

Too bad there doesn't seem to be any way to access the drivers without damaging the cabinets. If someone really wanted to get inside these what would anyone recommend? The only thing I could think of to do would be cut out the back panel with a saber saw, then put on a new removable back panel.

Anyway I'm glad I found them I think they'll be part of a cool 70s system.
Any guesses on the vintage by the way?

Looks like a nice "Zilch" project to me!!!!!!!

Wouldn't take much to wageguide those puppy's.
 
In late 1966 I had a little Claricon reel to reel self contained tape recorder. Took something like 3 inch reels. Sounded a little better than the shirt pocket transister radios from that time.

I remember this because of something it was used for. Two high school friends borrowed it one weekend. They were taking two girls to the drive-in, and set it up to record what the girls said about them, when they went to get refreshments.

They would not tell me what they heard. Got a feeling they got an ear-full, though. :D
 
claricon made mostly cheap stuff but apparently they made an attempt at a higher end stuff in a partnership with pearce simpson / gladding of marine radio fame. i have one of these claricon made gladding receivers and its really well built inside. on par with better pioneer stuff of the time.

as far as the cheap claricon stuff. i have a little claricon integrated that i really like. i run it with a pair of energy SAT1's that have german car speakers in them and it just sounds soo sweet as a bedside system. must be a big dose of synergy.
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=258113&highlight=claricon
 
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