** Another rubbish pile find - Sharp GF-8080 **

Hi Guys,

I was out yesterday afternoon on my normal run and spotted a very sorry looking but complete Sharp GF-8080 on top of a piss filled mattress and other general rubbish.

It looked so lonely that I had to pick it up:

Man, she was a real dirty girl:
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Well, I must say I was a little disappointed when I found the tuner string was busted. Of course, after years of neglect, nothing else on the unit worked either!

After a quick clean up, I pulled the back off and got to work. The 1977 GF-8080 is a little different to the later model Sharps as you have to pull the back off to do maintenance work. That means pulling the main board out before you have access to the deck. You then have to remove the deck to gain access to the tuner board.
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This was the first tuner string replacement I've attempted. I used the tuner string from a parts M9994 - the Sanyo tuner string is slightly heavier duty than the Sharp string. It was pretty straight forward on this model as the tuner board and string is isolated to one side of the box. I just measured the length of the old string and took a few photos of the string route. Overall, it was a good learning experience.

I lubed and re-belted the deck and cleaned the pots, all switches including the deck and record bar.

The Sharp is now fully operational and sounds pretty good considering the size of the unit.

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The APSS light on the left is pretty cool. I also noticed that the black surround for the APSS light and tuner dial is metal - very well build box.

My 6 year old daughter Catie has adopted the little Sharp so I guess it's her first boombox!
I asked her to look natural for the photo but you know kids!:
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So there you go, the Sharp's no grail but it's still another box saved from landfill.

James....

Nice work!

What a turnaround!!!! Great job Jimmy, brought back from the dead.....

A successful tuner string replacement is a great thing. Great work and it looks great bro.

That scrubbed up well....nice save!

Nice find and recovery! And your daughter is killing it with the pose!

Dang you really saved that one! It was destin for the DUMP! Nice job.

People with talent only see the goodness through the dirt and debris it had.
Amazing transformation.

Great Job! What a lucky box!

Well done Jimmy!

The diamond from the trash!
After all its an Aiwa. You can't go wrong with an Aiwa.

I think the GF-8080 dates from the late '70s. That little box cleaned up very well! I guess it was thrown out because of the busted tuner string! Plus it was filthy so it was obvious nobody cared about it. Then you came along!

You are hardcore to bother with that refurb job i wouldnt have even got past the mattress

Well done chief, you did a great job.

Holy F-BALLS!!!

Another example of a heroic save. The peeps who love the radios & refurbish the meekest of the bunch always have my admiration....\

I would have wrote that 1 off & thrown it in front of a train for fun....

Nice JOB!!!

APSS in the 70's? It is something to talk about.

wow...nice job....

Talk about back from the dead :grim:
That was pretty darn rough...glad you were able to pull it all back together and get it working....just amazing!

Tuner string replacement is nothing to sneeze at!

A fine job all round!

Excellent job jimmy, what a difference before and after, never know it was the same box! I've never done a tuner string repair myself, handy you had the old one for routing, but then getting the dial and tuning capacitor re-calibrated, tricky!

It is amazing what people get rid of these days, one man's trash is another man's treasure - found a Clairtone 7979 at my dump last year (see my started topics )

Yes, APSS was a Sharp exclusive, have two RT-1515 decks (one silver one black) with it, my first experience with Music Search, I thought the big solenoid releasing the FF and RW was really cool. Here are some links:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/optonica.178656/
http://www.vintagecassette.com/Optonica/RT-1515

And yes, they have that big flashing green APSS logo, your little trim insert is same as my black deck, real special

Cheers!

getting the dial and tuning capacitor re-calibrated, tricky!

Click to expand...

No need to realign if all you're doing is replacing the dial cord. As long as you use the correct length and have each spring correctly tensioned at each end of the run, then the tuning gang can only close or open fully if the cord is correctly fitted. Some of the more complex cord runs such as those in Grundig Satellits (and other sets with clutches to direct the movement from the tuning knob to either the FM or the AM tuning gangs) take longer if you don't have a restringing diagram but even those will eventually become clear as it's just a case of making sure that the plates are fully closed at one end of the scale and fully open at the other when you watch the tuning gang and check that the cursor runs end to end as the gang opens and closes.
Permeability tuning, such as that employed by thae eccentric production engineers at Philips, is a little harder to set up by eye but as long as you have access to a dial gauge you can tell when the cores are at BDC or TDC and it can be done.
Then there are the Roberts tuners which use potentiometers instead of the more common capacitative or inductive tuning; so they're easier still to string.

I would of course concede that any restring is easier with the relevant diagram, especially if you're new to doing the job, and [the diagrams] are available from HERE among other web-based sources.

Thanks for all the info John! I meant re-adjusting the pointer to match the scale, but I guess that and re-stringing it is fairly straight-forward if you take your time, certainly compared to the electronic re-calibration, which shouldn't be needed in most cases I'd imagine.

My Dad has always said tuning a radio board is something of a 'black-art', and I've learned never to fiddle with seemingly useless wires and thingys sticking up from the tuner board, they affect the magnetism!

That's a great site you linked, full of info, I've bookmarked it for future reference.

Cheers!

That GF8080 is a nice little boombox !
A big respect for all the effort and
JJ1970-2010 you gave a lot of love to this unit.
This is a very lucky unit indeed