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check out my low-fi penncrest 6911 receiver!

ke4mcl

ke4mcl

Super Member
Banned
i did well today selling off junk at an amateur radio flea market today and came home with only two new pieces which is quite a feat for me!

one of them is this low-fi Penncrest (JC Penny's) model 6911 stereo receiver. yeah i know, its low end. it caught my attention though. real wood box, separate boards, actually has a chassis, and uses output transformers so it must be early transistor stuff.

anybody know who made these for JC Penny's?

i'm going to go through and replace those bloated caps in the pics and any others that seem questionable. dont know why but i kinda enjoy taking these weird finds and putting a little work into them.

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Very cool,I have one like it. Just a little different. I have always wondered who made them also. I put the deoxit to it and it actually sounds very good. Just paired it up w/ my new/old Minimus 7s here in the bedroom. They work together quite well.
 
BTW,I just remembered a receiver identical to mine was listed on that auction site as a Penncrest made by Fisher. Not sure if that has any truth to it,just saying how the seller had it listed.
 
nolan,

i doubt penncrest was made by fisher at least in the 60's. fisher was american made until the early 70's. emerson bought them out and kept production here in the early 70's. i dont think the sanyo made stuff came around till the late 70's.

i think the clue as to who made it is that tri-star mitsubishi emblem looking mark on the a bunch of the parts. its not the mitsubishi emblem but similar. i've seen that on lots of older jap audio gear.
 
I've seen some Penncrest stuff that was rebadged National Panasonic gear, although this particular piece does not look the part.
 
I've seen quite a few of those, although not many lately. I'd guess the OEM was Matsushita, the maker of Panasonic. I'd say it's from the the late 60s but could be as late as 1972 or so. A cousin of mine had a Panasonic that looked just like that. He'd been in Vietnam and brought it back with him, iirc, from the PX in Thailand. That would have been 1971. Not much power but a quality unit.
 
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BrocLuno said:
Looks so much like 1960 Panasonic that it sort of weird. that's my bet - pana :)
Click to expand...

I agree... all the parts are Matsushita branded, and the boards look like the boards in my Panasonic flip clock, with the vertically mounted resistors and no markings on the boards.
 
i think matsushita built it after reading up all the posts here. the parts are all marked with their markings and MCS stuff sold by penny's was technics which was made by matsushita. it would make sense.

tomorrow it goes on the bench for some TLC.
 
ok,

so heres a little feedback on working on vintage matsushita stuff... its a PITA!

the insulation on the thin wires melts at the sight of a soldering iron making repairs a bit challenging. the wire is a bit on the cheap side.

the main filter caps were pooping their insides out so i replaced those. was going to replace the rectifier bridges due to age even though they check out ok but that was quickly curtailed when i ran into the magic melting wire insulation.

powered up unit and it came to life without missing a heartbeat. listened in fm mono a bit till i noticed i wasnt in stereo. switched to stereo and it took a while for stereo to "wake up". maybe theres some bad caps on that board but...

on to the boards. very reminiscent of early transistor radios. traces are made of solder on copper and they are a bit close. wayy to easy to accidentally bridge a trace. if cap "wakes up" i'm leaving it alone.

sound wise..
weak on the low end. its cool from a funky vintage standpoint, maybe a good garage stereo but nothing to be taken seriously.

power output..
weak. im guessing somewhere around 4-5 watts per channel max before the sound started getting fuzzy. my bench speakers are coaxial 8" drivers and usually play loud with just about anything i hook to them. this receiver just couldnt cut the mustard. i'm going to look up the output transistor part numbers and see what they spec at.
 
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Cool find. It does look like a very low powered receiver. The wattage rating is only 15 watts, so it might be less than 4 to 5 watts. Maybe just 1 or 2 watts.
 
1-2 watts would be downright funny! the output transistors are almost the size of TO-3's!

i cranked it to the threshold of distortion for a short bit and the transistors didnt even have a noticeable change of temp. the output transformers are ridiculously small so very low power makes sense.
 
I note that the crowded PC boards look like something out of an old portable transistor radio, the handheld kind I had as a kid. At least it did not have an eight-track slot.
 
checked out the output transistors and they are germanium! holy crap!

4.3w max dissipation which explains the low output.

all 4 are original and still working which is surprising for germaniums. as i understand it, if you use stuff with germaniums regularly they are ok. if you let the stuff sit then you begin to have problems. the guy that owned this set had stickers on it with name and address and they seemed fairly recent (no yellowing). guy was probably using the stuff till it got donated to GW which is where i picked it up.

tried "phono" input and its line level. i saw the original TT that came with this unit sitting at the GW and it looked like a cheapy so i left it behind. probably had a ceramic cart.

will be taken it home, oiling the cabinet and putting it to use in my carport-cigar lounge!
 
That is a truly nice *looking* unit at least :) The styling is really pretty darned cool. I like it better than a lot of gear I've seen actually. I too immediately recalled my childhood portable transistor radio when I saw the guts of this one. Enjoy!! (albeit quietly...) :D
 
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