Barn find TA-800, tips?

[Bill_0531]

Got this barn find TA-800 today, and its looking pretty rough. I've worked on multiple tube tape recorders before but never a receiver.

missing all its tubes, knobs, cabinet and possibly more.

The top side looks pretty bad with possible water damage and rust. luckily all the parts that should move moves.


The bottom side looked fine actually, no water damage and pretty clean, although I assume all caps have to be replaced.


what are the bare minimum tubes that I need to test it's functionality? I only need the preamp and phono preamp to work, no power amp and no radio.

I need some assistance in routing the tuning wires, and the AM one has snapped and the FM one isn't functioning correctly, need a list for caps I need to buy too.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

 

[kappclark]

Congrats on the discovery .. Yours looks to be in worse shape than this one (a 400) that a neighbor wanted to get rid of .. ...

Fortunately, the electrons don't care that much about the rust ... I am glad it has a wood case

 

[Dswankey]

As for caps and tubes service manual can be found in this thread

Looking for a Fisher TA800 Manual

I picked up a Fisher TA800 this weekend in a package deal off craigslist. I'm excited because it's my first piece of tube audio. I need to order a set of power tubes for it. Looks like the EH7591 is preferred by many in what I've read online. I have found a scan of the Fisher 800 service manual...

www.audiokarma.org

 

[gadget73]

You need the power amp to work if you want to do anything useful with it. There is no preamp output, and there is no buffer so even if you added one its high impedance and not overly well suited to drive most things. Also without the load of the power amp the voltages are going to be way off where they belong elsewhere.

7199 tubes, 7591, and all of the 12ax7 will get all of the audio bits live.

 

[Bill_0531]

You need the power amp to work if you want to do anything useful with it. There is no preamp output, and there is no buffer so even if you added one its high impedance and not overly well suited to drive most things. Also without the load of the power amp the voltages are going to be way off where they belong elsewhere.

7199 tubes, 7591, and all of the 12ax7 will get all of the audio bits live.

Thats good to hear. I have some 12AT7s left over from my tape recorder projects.

 

[gadget73]

need 12ax7 in this one.

 

[Bill_0531]

Got it, got those too. and found 2 7199s recently. do I need to replace the rectifier?

 

[gadget73]

Depends what it is. If its silicon, probably not, selenium would be a good thing to change. I don't know the TA-800 deeply. The TA-600 I have uses the same tuner and preamp stuff, but the power amp is different and I have two tube rectifiers. I don't think this uses a tube rectifier.

 

[Bill_0531]

Depends what it is. If its silicon, probably not, selenium would be a good thing to change. I don't know the TA-800 deeply. The TA-600 I have uses the same tuner and preamp stuff, but the power amp is different and I have two tube rectifiers. I don't think this uses a tube rectifier.

It's got a selenium rectifier. Thanks for the tip.