RARE old reciever: Pioneer SX-1000TA / c1968

[jpciii]

Check out this reciever that was given to me last week! It needed a good cleaning, a new fuse, and 6 new hard to find bulbs ( thanks dgwojo !! ) It is solid state, but has a TUBED tuner section!! sweet.
It works, but I need to do something about those stupid speaker connectors ... I don't have them, and I can only shove some wires in there to test. Anyone have an alternative to buying those connectors?
I haven't been able to find much about this thing on the net. I got it from the original owner who bought it in 1968 when he was stationed in Japan.


pics to follow...

 

[jpciii]

lit up face... missing a knob

 

[jpciii]

nudie.... pervert!

 

[jpciii]

cute little tube

 

[jpciii]

deee-lux! Look at all the inputs

 

[Crotalus]

Nice pics! That is a very nice looking receiver. Now if you ever want to part with it you know where to find me.

 

[mhardy6647]

Actually, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, there are three tubes in there. The two little cans to the right of the glass tube in your closeup of the FM front end appear to be Nuvistors. These were the last gasp of 'modern' vacuum tube design and found a fair amount of use in RF applications (FM and TV tuners) in the early/mid 1960's. The reason for this (and your tuner's hybrid design) was that RF transistors were hard to make and it was a while before reliable 'all solid state' components could be built.

The photo is an RCA 6CW4 Nuvistor next to a nine-volt battery (image 'borrowed' from http://www.tubecollector.org/list.php?L=-S&M=Y&H=Nuvistors)

In the early 1960's, there was a short phase of hybrid car radio designs that used low voltage "space charge" tubes (12 V on the plates!) and solid state outputs (germanium power transistors). Pete Millet designed a cute little hybrid tube/ss headphone amp using these tubes, powered by a 30 V wall wart. My avatar is a photo of one of these which I built for a charity auction.

http://pmillett.addr.com/hybrid_head.htm

 

[Glassman]

I have the SX-1000TW. Is it the same as the 1000TA only with the walnut cabinet? I never bothered to look closely enough to see if it had any tubes or not.

Jay

 

[jpciii]

mhardy, Thanks for the lesson in tutbes. Interesting stuff.

Glassman, I always hought the cabinets where just an extra option you could buy... I wasn't around back then, so I could very well be wrong. oaktreeent.com has a model SX-1000TD pictured on ther SOLD recievers page... looks similar, but the layout is different. I also saw mention of model SX-1000TS when I last searched. I also saw your SX-1000TW pictered HERE with the wood cabinet. Similar layout to the TD.

 

[oldmarantz]

the look is the same than my lx 34b but mine is all tubes

 

[MCS Guy]

I picked up one of these receivers today for 20 bucks. Everything is in working order.

 

[jpciii]

model SX-1000TA ?

 

[MCS Guy]

yeah, the 1000Ta. It has one panel bulb out that I can see. Needs good cleaning of the switches and pots. The right channel transistors have been changed though (SCA instead of Hitachi).

The tuner tube I have in mine contains a toshiba 6HA5, and 2 hitachi "nuvistor" 6CW4's.

Everything works, all knobs are present, though the faceplate lettering is starting to rub off. Still has the original coupling caps. The Filter caps to the right of the trannie in your picture are not original. All caps are Nippon Chemi-con's Blue top.

 

[Elbowgeek]

jpciii, you have a PM about the connectors

Cheers

 

[jpciii]

oldmarantz, Nice looking reciever!

MCS Guy, Congrats... maybe this model isn't that rare after all? I still can't seem to get many hits about it. Thanks for the heads up about the non-original caps.

Elbowgeek, check out how I've sidestepped the connector issue.

(pic below)

I found these female tab connectors at the Menards down the street for $4.99. These are the really small size that are a little harder to find. The larger and more common size looked too big. I had to tap on them with a hamer to flatten them out a little bit (not much).

Been giving it some play time with some cheeeap speaks, (still need a good meter to check DC offset) and have noticed a white noise/hiss out of the left channel. Other than that, it sounds pretty ok.... not going to replace the Marantz 2265B, but it looks pretty cool so I'll probably keep it.

 

[Elbowgeek]

Cool, that sounds like a good alternative.

Actually I understand that they are quite hard to find and I had considered flogging them on fleaBay, but I doubt they're woth the effort and money.

Interestingly the back panel to my Pioneer tube receiver is similar in the strip with the icons 'splainin' the connector functions. Reminds me of some computers with their hookup icons. Quite ahead of their time, making it more user friendly.

Enjoy...