Sansui sd-5050 reel to reel

Lister

Cheif Smegger
This may well be considered pure junk by many on this forum, looking at the pictures of yours I may well agree, but its my first reel to reel and im exciting about restoring it and using it.

I havent hooked any speakers up to it yet but everything seemed to work in the charity store I got it from. All the buttons, dials, lights, VU meters etc.

Fun little project, dont care if it never works 100% really, not at $20 :)


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This is a nice deck. And a Quad as well and can play back Stereo easily. Well made, reasonably nice sonics and well made. Not cheap when new.
 
ah good thanks!
I was thinking the QD was the quad recorder.
Im not sure what some of the dials mean, recording bias etc, guess ill have to find a manual for it.
 
Dont lie to the man.

The SD-5050 is so deplorably unworthy as a music reproduction instrument it gives pure junk a bad name. It also loves to eat up your tapes so they bunch up and look like an accordion and waits until you're not looking for the supply reel to stop and all your tape spools off onto the floor. All the knobs and controls eventually break off and the tape heads never stay aligned. Assuming you can get it to power up and the transport works in its feeble little way, the audio it puts out is so poor that no one has been able listen to the ear-grating cacophony for more than a few minutes without developing a migraine or having a grand mal...those who dared to go longer went insane and either jumped off of high rises or stared at the sun until they went blind. If you STILL decided to keep a SD-5050 just to look at, better keep it unplugged as they are notorious for shorting out and catching fire -- lots of houseboats were burnt to the waterline by these decks. So have you figured out by now Im bullshitting you?
 
Sansui reel to reel

For $20 bucks!
You got yourself one heck of a deal!:thmbsp:
Not to mention the fact that it came with an "original Sansui 7" metal reel" that alone is worth much more than $20 bucks! Also with another 7" reel with tape! :yes:
Everything lights up, etc. should be a fun starter-project for you plus that's not a bad reel to reel from what I've read about it. There's just not too many of those being used but I'm sure that they're out there just waiting to be discovered. :scratch2:
 
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I pick up a SD-7000 a year or so ago and it sounds fantastic. Probably share alot of the same parts. And they are heavy as hell !! Clean er up will good inside and out and fire it up. The bias is for tape type (recording specs). Nice grab
 
yeah I'll give it a really good cleaning but I suspect that wont help with channels not working in reverse mode (at least they are very very quiet) and the 3rd one not working in forward.

We'll see what happens, I can live with it the way it is if it never gets fixed. Even 2 channels stereo is fine as im sending it through my surround sound system anyway which does a great job of simulating quadraphonic.

I can still enjoy it, im not really likely to start re-soldering capacitors or resistors here and there, way over my head there sadly.
 
As an aside - the styling of the preamp section of that deck matches perfectly with most of Sansui's components of the early to mid-`70s. I had a Sansui 4-Channel amplifier which had discrete inputs (tailor made for your deck) as well as a 4-ch "simulator" mode employing the "QS" algorithm, as opposed to the "SQ" one which was more prevalent at the time...
 
FWIW: Those are supposed to be very nice machines. You did well for your first purchase. Rimmer would be proud.
 
So I took the back off today, cleaned everything really well
Nothing seems loose, or corroded, or bad in any way.

Any advice for me trying to track down why the 3rd channel is extremely quiet in forward mode, and the 2nd and 3rd channel is the same in reverse play mode?

I have a manual on the way
 
Some interesting information gained today.

With the head cover removed I was checking everything is connected ok and it is.
But when I hovered my finger over the circuit board the heads are attached to, the VU meters for the channels that dont work moved, in fact moved quite drastically.

Like, in reverse mode, the left channel of the front channels works, and the right channel of the rear channels works, but none of the others.
Hover my finger over the PCB and the VU meters go into the red on the ones that dont.

IN forward mode, the left and right channel for the front channel works and the right channel of the rear does but not the left of the rear
Hover my finger over the PCB and it jumps into the red, in fact it raises increasingly according to how close my finger is to the PCB
If this is confusing, I can make a video to show. In fact I think I will

Significant? Still looking like bad caps?
 
Some interesting information gained today.

With the head cover removed I was checking everything is connected ok and it is.
But when I hovered my finger over the circuit board the heads are attached to, the VU meters for the channels that dont work moved, in fact moved quite drastically.

Like, in reverse mode, the left channel of the front channels works, and the right channel of the rear channels works, but none of the others.
Hover my finger over the PCB and the VU meters go into the red on the ones that dont.

IN forward mode, the left and right channel for the front channel works and the right channel of the rear does but not the left of the rear
Hover my finger over the PCB and it jumps into the red, in fact it raises increasingly according to how close my finger is to the PCB
If this is confusing, I can make a video to show. In fact I think I will

Significant? Still looking like bad caps?

You are creating a ground when you do that. I would check for PCB cracks, cold solder joints, wire(s) that "look" attached but aren't. Clean any and all connectors to boards with DeOxit. If that doesn't help, then you need to start taking voltage measurements.
 
ok you guys all seem to swear by this DeOxit stuff so I'll get some of that for sure.
I'd love to find a bad contact or dry joint or something, fix that and all is well.

Is it only available online? Is it spray on? How do you apply it
 
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