I was the production manager at Dynatron when we made these. The production was initially in Maidenhead. It then moved to Kings Lynn and Fakenham in Norfolk. They thought the labour force would be cheaper there. They didnt make the cabinets. They were subcontracted from various furniture makers. Dynatron did not make the cassette unit. These were brought in from Philips in Holland. Not all they were cracked up to be. The Royal Warrant was the selling feature. Eventually the firm folded through poor sales and the parent company Philips shut the brand down.
"Took longer than Philip Schofield to come out", that hasn't travelled well😅🤣 Great vid, starting to really enjoy your insights into old tech I've grown up with.
Been a Audio/ Hifi engineer for over 48 years and remember working these when i was about 22 as the company i was working for was the service dept for harrods and they sold thousands of these.
My mum worked for Garrard turntables back in the 60s... they made some good kit in their day, the 401 was a beast. Lovely woodwork and nostalgia. Good job, well done and well done to the owner for cherishing this piece of antiquity.
My uncle has one of those to this day and I remember hearing it in the early 70s and loving the deep bass. About 10 years ago I was over there and asked him to put it on and it sounded terrible! I asked if it was faulty and he said no. Then I remembered that I'd worked for Audio Note for 10 years and every system in my house is Class-A valve gear, so I smiled and said "Tricks of the mind!"
Your ears are well-trained now. Also we always remember past things more positively than they really were. So when you revisit them later.... you are met with disappointment. But having worked at AN, I'm sure you could tweak it to sound MUCH better !
Dynatron stuff does sound good particularly certain speaker models and the valve amplified kit. All equipped with proper British Mullards. If it sounds bad he's probably got some dodgy caps and just got used it, it's aged along with him. Fix it for him!
That looks like an antique set of DJ decks. Except one is a tape deck, the mixer is a tuner/amp combo, and the flight case is made out of fancy wood! xD
back in the 70s. my dad had a Fidelity UA5 music centre and we listened to the radio before leaving for school etc I managed to track two down with the intention of making one good one - then covid hit etc. Watching these you've inspired me to have another try, taking LOTS of pictures along the way so I know how they go back together
Here in Liverpool UK there was a store that was a dealer for Dynatron, they were in a class of their own, beautiful cabinets . You had to be well off to own a Dynatron in the 1970's
i remember my mates mom had one in "the posh" front room, we were not allowed in. but one night she went out, and we played queen at full blast ! those were the days ( and after we ran through a field of corn )
As an ex Draughtsman....somebody made drawings of that lot!! GA's...schematics....manufacturing drgs. Amazing...all on an A0 board with Rotrings and flexi-curves.
Whilst, with a finger or two, petting the studio cat, holding an almost anchient tape deck just loosened from the stereo unit stood on its side, he coined the phrase; 'This took longer to come out than Phillip Schofield'
The dynatrons were very good. I have about twenty of them, all with goldring lencos turntables. I bought them to pillage the Lencos but they are too nice to break! The amplifiers 24, 25 and 26 were a bit underpowered but the type (31?) you are working on are much more powerful. And the modular construction makes access very easy. Clunky, but well laid out for servicing. I love them .
The output amps were very cheap to manufacture. We put them in every model from the bottom of the range to the classy looking units like this one. The sound quality was very mid-range, the price wasn't!
I've got absolutely no interest in audio equipment whatsoever, so I don't know why your video was suggested to me. But I actually found it really interesting. Watched a few of your videos now. It's good stuff :)
it's so weird how aesthetics change from generation to generation. I assume this was seen as the epitome of refinement but i see the case and my knee-jerk reaction is "great aunts sideboard" or something lol and I can't believe anyone would hide that, imo, extremely smart looking tuner unit. Great work as always.
As I recall back in the day, Fast Forward used to be that you'd need to hold the button down rather than latching on - it was a feature. Rewind would latch and only stop when you pressed the Stop button.
Hello, I love watching repair videos, I admire your knowledge, you have great videos, I've probably watched all of them, I'm looking forward to the new ones, best regards. 👌👌👌💪💪💪.
Out of Kings Lynn factory in the 70's, I worked on them, my mother owned A similar model without a tape Deck, which worked perfectly, she sent it to the local auction house in 2004, and received £6.00 for it....
Another enjoyable video Mark. Ah, the "Buckingham" Queen Anne Dynatron. Hopefully the legs are still somewhere and not just amputated for convenience? It was quite pricey when it was new. Introduced for the 1976 season, it started out being sold for a recommended £664 ($1341 USD). That's £3851($4839 USD) in 2024. By 1977 the leftover dead stock was being sold for a deeply discounted £370. Crikey expensive but for looks only, not quality reproduction. Like many of those units, it unfortunately isn't what it pretended to be. It looks nice but is an assemblage of those 1970's plastic and mostly rubbish components. Dyatron touted the record deck as a Garrard "single play with a magnetic cartridge". Yes, it is, but it is a tarted up low end unit built on the the old AT-60 design. A decent design but not high end. It is also problem prone especially with frozen cycle cams and turntable sleeve seizures. By the late 1970's long gone was the quality that made a Garrard a "Garrard."
I had a Sony cassette player and the FF didn't latch either in fact it was labelled 'Skip' for just shifting the tape forwards in short sections with one press. Otherwise you have to keep pressing 'stop +play' each time you wanted to skip forward a bit.
My Dad's Dynatron / Garrard turntable had issues with the pots going very scratchy. I didn't see you check the volume knob so I assume it worked ok and wasn't reported. That old system sounded better than budget to mid-range HIFI systems 20 years later. I'm gutted he chucked it out at the dump.
Going back to the tape deck. I would of stuck a notch in it myself. As it just makes things so much easier and like any other tape deck. But OBVIOUSLY you would of spoken to the customer first, before you started modifying it. 0:13 Is that a Record No25 by any chance? And does it have a quick release? Having a quick release on THAT size of a vice is sooooo handy, but if yours hasn't. Then just imagine how many times, over the countless years, you've had to finger your vice just to open it up enough, to stick a large part inside. But there are times when you didn't finger it enough on the first go, so the part won't fit. So THEN you have to finger it just a tiny bit more, to get the large part inside. The bigger the part, your never quite sure IF you've fingered it open enough to get it in on the last try.
Excellent series, where people can actually learn something. I have similar digital scope yours - TDS5054. On mine all the fans blow inwards. Is that correct ?
You find homophobia funny? As a gay man myself, I would suggest Mark's comment has undertones of said homophobia? And shame on you for finding it so hilarious! Would YOU like the piss ripping out of you??? ... How would Mark like it if I said the Stereogram weighs about as much as he does? And that's NOT even being particularly hateful! (Due to an infestation of hate-filled trolls, and the toxic nature of social media, I no longer monitor or revisit any comments I may make!)
@@marcse7en Can you explain why you think it's "homophobic" as you claim? Why would you think that the person delivering the line might not be gay themselves?
I think the fast forward is tied to the play button so you press both and it fast forwards for long fast forward or you can just tap fastforward for little jumps
You can see why the British hifi industry went to the wall apart from the really high end equipment. Virtually every component in this music centre was made from metal, in imports it’s always manufactured from plastic.
Mark, are there any problems that can be caused by machine oil degrading plastic or rubber parts? I ask because I have been wondering whether I should use silicone instead of petroleum based lubricants on such mechanisms. Great repair, though I’m still wondering what popped the fuse.
Can't give you an absolute answer Michael but I can tell you that you should not use petroleum products on plumbing plastics and rubbers at all as it degrades them - safest is to use silicone.
In a comment someone asked about use of silicone or petroleum based lubricants. DO NOT use Silicone based lubricants near electrical equipment. Silicone lubricant is Silicon (Si) based and electrical arcing turns it into glass (SiO2), an insulator. Not good for switches, relays or potentiometers. Silicone lubricant vapour entering these is enough to cause a problem. If you don't believe me, refer to Subaru's recent global brake light switch inoperative recall.
surprised you didn't mention cleaning the heads.. and the capstan roller.. gunk on these cause the tape to stick to them and the wind round and round and a pain to get out
The cassette player was from Philips. Most of the electronics was produced by Dynatron but the radio included a modular Mullard tuner which was very cheap.
mice to see uk qualitx product with midular design, faciliraring etter sericeability. afairly hardx jao tape deck chosen, too., plated metal components
Given that one should hide that nasty new technology, Imagine the man who came home with the first candle and lit it up. It would have been, "Yes dear, but you'll have to make a wattle and daub shield for it as it is so blindingly bright and so that it fits in with the décor"
Thank you for sharing what you do. We didn't see you cleaning the record playback switches on the tape deck PCB or cleaning the capstan and pinch roller, I wonder if you do that as a matter of course. Have to say I'm really surprised you leave old electrolytics in even if they test out okay for me that's just asking for trouble.
I was the production manager at Dynatron when we made these. The production was initially in Maidenhead. It then moved to Kings Lynn and Fakenham in Norfolk. They thought the labour force would be cheaper there. They didnt make the cabinets. They were subcontracted from various furniture makers. Dynatron did not make the cassette unit. These were brought in from Philips in Holland. Not all they were cracked up to be. The Royal Warrant was the selling feature. Eventually the firm folded through poor sales and the parent company Philips shut the brand down.
"Took longer than Philip Schofield to come out", that hasn't travelled well😅🤣 Great vid, starting to really enjoy your insights into old tech I've grown up with.
Not getting any better now either :)
Watching from Southern California!
I’m a retired TV/Radio Broadcast tech lady who started out in the mid 70’s
Loving the fact that a bad lead led to trouble…I’m not alone!-)
Been a Audio/ Hifi engineer for over 48 years and remember working these when i was about 22 as the company i was working for was the service dept for harrods and they sold thousands of these.
I had to Google Philip Schofield, being an American. lol But "We have a smug face on Mark now." Was my favorite!
Really enjoying your channel!
I used to work at Dynatron, back in the 70s,making these units. Happy days!
The Company I worked for assembled the radio part of these Dynatrons under sub contract to PYE/DYNATRON, My job was tuning alignment and final test.
My mum worked for Garrard turntables back in the 60s... they made some good kit in their day, the 401 was a beast. Lovely woodwork and nostalgia. Good job, well done and well done to the owner for cherishing this piece of antiquity.
My uncle has one of those to this day and I remember hearing it in the early 70s and loving the deep bass. About 10 years ago I was over there and asked him to put it on and it sounded terrible! I asked if it was faulty and he said no. Then I remembered that I'd worked for Audio Note for 10 years and every system in my house is Class-A valve gear, so I smiled and said "Tricks of the mind!"
Your ears are well-trained now. Also we always remember past things more positively than they really were. So when you revisit them later.... you are met with disappointment. But having worked at AN, I'm sure you could tweak it to sound MUCH better !
Dynatron stuff does sound good particularly certain speaker models and the valve amplified kit. All equipped with proper British Mullards. If it sounds bad he's probably got some dodgy caps and just got used it, it's aged along with him. Fix it for him!
Just watched for a second time 😊
Just for the joy of it.
That looks like an antique set of DJ decks. Except one is a tape deck, the mixer is a tuner/amp combo, and the flight case is made out of fancy wood! xD
back in the 70s. my dad had a Fidelity UA5 music centre and we listened to the radio before leaving for school etc
I managed to track two down with the intention of making one good one - then covid hit etc. Watching these you've inspired me to have another try, taking LOTS of pictures along the way so I know how they go back together
I used to sell those when I worked in the CoOp!
10:35 - BWAHAHAHAHA! That almost slipped past me that one. Love it Mark, and have loved spending my evenings with ya recently :)
Here in Liverpool UK there was a store that was a dealer for Dynatron, they were in a class of their own,
beautiful cabinets . You had to be well off to own a Dynatron in the 1970's
Glad to see you have provided a home for a cat. Lots of toys, but please keep him/her safe from shocks. Cheers
I can say you are the Masaya of electrons, you have miraclus hands,I really enjoy the way you fix the problems❤
i remember my mates mom had one in "the posh" front room, we were not allowed in. but one night she went out, and we played queen at full blast ! those were the days ( and after we ran through a field of corn )
Hehe - I did the same with my parents (wonderful) B&O Stereogram. WHAT a fab sound! Rick Wakeman 'White Rock' at Vol 11 was awesome...
As an ex Draughtsman....somebody made drawings of that lot!! GA's...schematics....manufacturing drgs. Amazing...all on an A0 board with Rotrings and flexi-curves.
What a very nice set. I do like the cassette mech too. I think Alfie is very cute too.
I'm moving to England and you're going to teach me all your secrets Mark, happy days!
Whilst, with a finger or two, petting the studio cat, holding an almost anchient tape deck just loosened from the stereo unit stood on its side, he coined the phrase; 'This took longer to come out than Phillip Schofield'
The dynatrons were very good. I have about twenty of them, all with goldring lencos turntables. I bought them to pillage the Lencos but they are too nice to break!
The amplifiers 24, 25 and 26 were a bit underpowered but the type (31?) you are working on are much more powerful.
And the modular construction makes access very easy.
Clunky, but well laid out for servicing. I love them .
The output amps were very cheap to manufacture. We put them in every model from the bottom of the range to the classy looking units like this one. The sound quality was very mid-range, the price wasn't!
Coming from Hereford I'm loving the Wye Valley Brewery pint glass :)
Hi Stuart, I’m from Hereford also👍
@@waynegriffiths5143 Me too. This can be the official Herefordian corner of the comment section.
I used to live there too, Elthelstan Cres back in the eighties....
Of course you are. There's a Wye Valley pub on the Street they named after you!
I've got absolutely no interest in audio equipment whatsoever, so I don't know why your video was suggested to me. But I actually found it really interesting. Watched a few of your videos now. It's good stuff :)
it's so weird how aesthetics change from generation to generation. I assume this was seen as the epitome of refinement but i see the case and my knee-jerk reaction is "great aunts sideboard" or something lol and I can't believe anyone would hide that, imo, extremely smart looking tuner unit. Great work as always.
As I recall back in the day, Fast Forward used to be that you'd need to hold the button down rather than latching on - it was a feature. Rewind would latch and only stop when you pressed the Stop button.
there was a lot of early tape Dec mechs that did not latch on the FF button. Great vid thanks.
Hello, I love watching repair videos, I admire your knowledge, you have great videos, I've probably watched all of them, I'm looking forward to the new ones, best regards.
👌👌👌💪💪💪.
"This took longer to come out than Phillip Schofield": belly laugh of the day fulfilled!
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I still remember those old tapemechanism, easy to repair but not all were playing tapes well (-:
Love your work!
From my knowledge of working for Dynatron the tape mechanisms were made by Philips.
Never mind the leaky caps or the bias offset. What’s the cats name? We like to see a Kitty in the workshop!
Just the one easy to replace drive belt and a proper capstan flywheel, brilliant, you won't get that nowadays.
excellent video, thank you
The FF button is probably a 'Scan' feature, leaving the head pad slightly in contact and head active during the search operation.
brilliant Pip reference :)
When you lubricate the capstan shaft, remember that you clean the capstan on the frontside before testing or popping in a tape.
Many early cassette recorders had non-latching fast forward buttons. SANYO units mostly.
Out of Kings Lynn factory in the 70's, I worked on them, my mother owned A similar model without a tape Deck, which worked perfectly, she sent it to the local auction house in 2004, and received £6.00 for it....
Thank you for posting 👍👍
Love that set, god bless the king now i guess.
Another enjoyable video Mark. Ah, the "Buckingham" Queen Anne Dynatron. Hopefully the legs are still somewhere and not just amputated for convenience? It was quite pricey when it was new. Introduced for the 1976 season, it started out being sold for a recommended £664 ($1341 USD). That's £3851($4839 USD) in 2024. By 1977 the leftover dead stock was being sold for a deeply discounted £370. Crikey expensive but for looks only, not quality reproduction.
Like many of those units, it unfortunately isn't what it pretended to be. It looks nice but is an assemblage of those 1970's plastic and mostly rubbish components. Dyatron touted the record deck as a Garrard "single play with a magnetic cartridge". Yes, it is, but it is a tarted up low end unit built on the the old AT-60 design. A decent design but not high end. It is also problem prone especially with frozen cycle cams and turntable sleeve seizures. By the late 1970's long gone was the quality that made a Garrard a "Garrard."
If it was Cliff Richard , it never will! 😂
Beautiful piece.
Very cool design.
I had a Sony cassette player and the FF didn't latch either in fact it was labelled 'Skip' for just shifting the tape forwards in short sections with one press. Otherwise you have to keep pressing 'stop +play' each time you wanted to skip forward a bit.
I saw the cat in the thumbnail, I clicked the video.
I saw the cat in the video, I clicked "like".
"In this world we're just beginning, to understand the miracle of living! Baby i was agraid before, I'm not afraid anymore!"
My Dad's Dynatron / Garrard turntable had issues with the pots going very scratchy. I didn't see you check the volume knob so I assume it worked ok and wasn't reported. That old system sounded better than budget to mid-range HIFI systems 20 years later. I'm gutted he chucked it out at the dump.
I didn't notice any cleaning of the capstans or demagnetization of the tape heads like you did in some other videos.
In these older videos Mark sometimes doesn't show some of the steps of the repairs.
Going back to the tape deck. I would of stuck a notch in it myself. As it just makes things so much easier and like any other tape deck.
But OBVIOUSLY you would of spoken to the customer first, before you started modifying it.
0:13 Is that a Record No25 by any chance? And does it have a quick release? Having a quick release on THAT size of a vice is sooooo handy, but if yours hasn't.
Then just imagine how many times, over the countless years, you've had to finger your vice just to open it up enough, to stick a large part inside. But there are times when you didn't finger it enough on the first go, so the part won't fit. So THEN you have to finger it just a tiny bit more, to get the large part inside. The bigger the part, your never quite sure IF you've fingered it open enough to get it in on the last try.
I LOL when you said 'Posh'!
Excellent series, where people can actually learn something. I have similar digital scope yours - TDS5054. On mine all the fans blow inwards. Is that correct ?
I Love this old 70ties Things.
In Germany wie have Wega, rosita, Grundig and other compact Systems :)
Old system with a toroidal transformer
On tape deck make sure capstan is clean & pinch roller is clean in good shape
took longer to come out than Philip Schofield 😆😅😆🤣 subscribed JUST for the joke Alone
You find homophobia funny? As a gay man myself, I would suggest Mark's comment has undertones of said homophobia? And shame on you for finding it so hilarious! Would YOU like the piss ripping out of you??? ... How would Mark like it if I said the Stereogram weighs about as much as he does? And that's NOT even being particularly hateful!
(Due to an infestation of hate-filled trolls, and the toxic nature of social media, I no longer monitor or revisit any comments I may make!)
@@marcse7en oh behave ya big touchy poof
@@marcse7en where was the homophobia?
@@marcse7en that's not what homophobia is
@@marcse7en Can you explain why you think it's "homophobic" as you claim? Why would you think that the person delivering the line might not be gay themselves?
I think the fast forward is tied to the play button so you press both and it fast forwards for long fast forward or you can just tap fastforward for little jumps
choice vinyl to test too! love a bit of sky!
Nice looking that
Cute cat.
Absolutley! Alfie is the BOSS!
Hi - great channel - just wondered what a job like this would cost someone
Doing this job would likely cost most people their sanity. Don't know what the customers would pay.
Hello, best regards from Nothern Germany, the Home of Becks Beer🙋
Please Show more CatVid...😊
Nette Grüße aus dem Oldenberger Land 👍
You can see why the British hifi industry went to the wall apart from the really high end equipment. Virtually every component in this music centre was made from metal, in imports it’s always manufactured from plastic.
Took longer to come out than Phillip Schofield 😂😂😂
Oh. I like that machine. Quality :)
Mark, are there any problems that can be caused by machine oil degrading plastic or rubber parts? I ask because I have been wondering whether I should use silicone instead of petroleum based lubricants on such mechanisms. Great repair, though I’m still wondering what popped the fuse.
Can't give you an absolute answer Michael but I can tell you that you should not use petroleum products on plumbing plastics and rubbers at all as it degrades them - safest is to use silicone.
@@Lyndalewinder thank you very much for the response!
In a comment someone asked about use of silicone or petroleum based lubricants. DO NOT use Silicone based lubricants near electrical equipment. Silicone lubricant is Silicon (Si) based and electrical arcing turns it into glass (SiO2), an insulator. Not good for switches, relays or potentiometers. Silicone lubricant vapour entering these is enough to cause a problem. If you don't believe me, refer to Subaru's recent global brake light switch inoperative recall.
The received wisdom used to be that the most expensive component on the board will sacrifice itself to protect a 3p fuse - got lucky this time !
Newer one than me moms which didnt have the cassette but did have the speakers facing the front at both sides.
Would Abbot work than IPA?
Greene King’s IPA is designed to clean your insides out, and not cassette mechanisms. Abbot Ale will make you subscribe to my channel. 😆
@@MendItMark Already have done Mark, fascinating stuff watched every video till 3.30am this morning.
Hi, dont suppose you have a radio signal meter for a Dynatron SRX 26 ? think it was fitted to a few other models aswell , regards Mike
Phillip Schofield ref was excellent sir😂
I want a T-shirt with smug face Mark on it 🤣
surprised you didn't mention cleaning the heads.. and the capstan roller.. gunk on these cause the tape to stick to them and the wind round and round and a pain to get out
Impressed the cat knows all about Philip Schofield.
Cat🐱👍!
the deck looks like a garrard sp25 mk4?
I've seen that before with FF, where it's just a cueing mechanism rather than a full locking FF.
Did you get the stereo LED working?
Mark, what is your cats name?
I did repair one of these back in the day
It wasnt as nice as this one though. Were these not Philips or mullard amplifiers?
The cassette player was from Philips. Most of the electronics was produced by Dynatron but the radio included a modular Mullard tuner which was very cheap.
I was pleasantly surprised that the unit has a toroidal transformer.
Nice 1
I wish all tape deck belts were that easy to change
Early cassette decks didn't have a latching FF, only RW.
My mum had one. Beautiful furniture but the system wasn't special back then.
👍👍
is it some older one who you fixed it for i bet i had a mate who picked one up from car boot sale
Hi where are you based , I have a dynatron to service etc
mice to see uk qualitx product with midular design, faciliraring etter sericeability. afairly hardx jao tape deck chosen, too., plated metal components
auto stop button not check?
👍👌👍👌
Given that one should hide that nasty new technology, Imagine the man who came home with the first candle and lit it up. It would have been, "Yes dear, but you'll have to make a wattle and daub shield for it as it is so blindingly bright and so that it fits in with the décor"
The screw came out way before Philip Scofield 😮
"We have a smug face on Mark, now".... I wish I could use that line but my name isn't Mark. Just saying. Thank you for the video.
I hate electronics even though I work at a hifi company, but these videos are so interesting Mark.
😃👏👏
What's your Kittie"s name??
Alfie
Hou meet you sir
10:37 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Thank you for sharing what you do. We didn't see you cleaning the record playback switches on the tape deck PCB or cleaning the capstan and pinch roller, I wonder if you do that as a matter of course. Have to say I'm really surprised you leave old electrolytics in even if they test out okay for me that's just asking for trouble.