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RCA Victor Console with the works

rshadley

rshadley

Active Member
I came across this rough looking console and salvaged the tube amp, reverb amp and mpx adaptor. Who would a thunk a reverb amp in a RCA console in 61. :scratch2: Huge power transformer to fire up all those tubes and the tuner/preamp. I put a maggie amp next to it for size comparison.:banana:
 

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you're not kidding about the big hunk o iron on that thing. Should have a pretty rock solid power supply and I'd expect it to run very cool. Outputs look pretty comparable to the Magnavox transformers though. Still, cool stuff. Also, bonus for saving parts from a ragged out console. Thats my favorite kind of salvage operation.
 
Looks like your RCA is an RS-177 (4x6BQ5). Those sound very nice when recapped, however, you'll have to rewire the circuit in order to use it as a stand-alone.
 
I have one of those (RS-177) and a Maggie 8802 . I use it with a Dynaco pas3 pre. To me the RCA sounds far better. Great amp
 
jcon109 said:
I have one of those (RS-177) and a Maggie 8802 . I use it with a Dynaco pas3 pre. To me the RCA sounds far better. Great amp
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Try rolling some other tubes in the 6CG7 hole if you want to play with it. 6DJ8, 6BK7B, Russian 6N1P, 6BQ7A, etc..... IME, the amp needed a bit more gain to drive it as a stand alone and I think I settled on the 6N1P do to the better bass it was making (more gain too).
 
I plan to recap it before I bring it up on a variac. I will try some tube rolling when she is ready. For now I'am using a Yamaha C80 as a preamp. I have not looked for a schematic yet, what circuit needs rewiring. I assume that I can just rewire the RCA proprietary receptacle to a standard RCA input and clean up the input from the preamp/tuner and add a on/off switch for starters.
 
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You only need to rewire it if you are going for more gain like Jay said. Otherwise try different tubes for 6CG7/6FQ7. There are probably not as many choices with a 6CG7 as with a higher gain 12AX7.
Beitman and Sams both made schematics for this model. I use my RS-177H with the original tuner/pre.
 
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