Before & After
This Sears Silvertone Turntable 7056 was a diamond in the rough. Once the thick layer of dust was cleaned off the realization that this set was in great shape set in. The Chassie had never been touched. All the original caps and wiring were there. If I didn't know better I would say plug it in and give it try. Knowing better I swapped out the electrolitic caps first.
This set must have been put away and forgotten about in some dry area. As we got further into the restoration we noticed all the rubber pieces were dried out and would crumble apart when touched. This is usually a bad sign of more work to come depending on whats rubber. Lucky this was a good thing for us. We quickly realized why the radio station tuning needle wound not move. To the right you can see the old rubber tuning pulley had dried out and was cut in half by the tuning thread. We fortunately have access to a lathe and made a new pulley which corrected our mystery 'lack of tuning' problem easily.
Once we did the basic electronic work, tested tubes, and got the radio to come alive again we moved onto the turntable. We quickly learned that in order to get the actual turntable to work we needed to clean the on/off switch that is actuated by the needle arm. Using the old 'silent night' child record that came with it we tested the turntable out and it worked. Loud and clear but with a minor problem with the rotation of the table itself. There was a repeating 'thud' noise coming through the needle from the turntable itself. We assumed something must be wrong with the electric motor turning the table itself and ripped into it. It was one well built heavy wire wound motor that weighed a good amount. Saw no obvious problems with it and racked our brains about where the 'thud' is coming from. That's when we finally put two and two together and discovered the rubber ring on the large pulley that connects the electric motor to the actual turntable was dried out and damaged in one spot. That one spot is where the electric motor's rotating shaft must of parked itself while it sat for years creating a indentation in the rubber ring. Hardly noticeable to the eye but definitely to the needle. No way we would be able to get an original ring for the pulley so we improvised and found that a modern day thermostat housing O-ring for a chevy 350 engine was the same diameter. We tried it and it was a perfect fit. No more 'thud'.
Before we finished it up we installed a RCA cable through the turntable signal line without modifying the case. This allows for a aux line to be plugged in and is not damaging the originality of the set. Just remove the line and its factory again. This made the set even more functional by allowing an MP3 player, FM radio, Satellite Radio, etc to be used through it. Have your cake and eat it to!!!
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