Recently I met up with Boomboxery member Dr. Dre (David) at one of the So Cal meets
We spent the day going through his extensive collection and he was showing me a recent acquisition. A Rexcel JCX-1000.
I believe this to be a fairly rare radio, I know I have seen them before, but not in big numbers. If any one else has one, please post in the "Collections" section and link it here.
The over all condition of the radio was filthy and hard to determine. It powered up, but none of the equalizer sliders did much, the balance slider did nothing and the volume was low and only had sound out of one channel. Only one VU meter working. Missing all but a few cassette keys. No functioning power switch. It was also missing the battery door.
BUT WHAT A BEAST!
Slightly bigger than a J1 or Helix HX-4700 this thing is HUGE with 8 inch woofers and genuine 3 way speakers system and tons of chrome.
Here she is, dirty as hell
Dave and I talked and came up with a game plan for this radio.
First, the decks are both there and probably re-belt-able, but without deck keys, he's S.O.L.
IF YOU HAVE A PARTS BOX WITH KEYS PLEASE CONTACT ME OR DAVID. Might need a few other things if you have more parts.
First, since I was working on Dave's radio AKA "Mr PBR", I had to do it right
The tear down begins....
Like many radio's this thing had been heavily molested.
The power switch had been soldered and re-soldered many times and finally cut out of the loop with a wire nut on the wires. So to power up the radio, you simply plugged it in
and she was dirty inside
The main board containing the tuner and equalizer came out. I knew the sliders needed to be cleaned to try to suss out the problems of low volume and one channel not working.
Might as well polish the chrome slider controls
Since one of the channels was not working, the previous HACK cut the speaker wires from one side and attached it to the other channel 
NEVER DO THIS! Just fix it right 
:annoyed:
Did I mention it was dirty????
One thing that is nice, this radio has it's own separate amplifier (not on main board), so you could technically upgrade the amp if you wanted too (hint hint
)
Oh so dirty...
OK, enough is enough, it's time to just tear it all the way down and do it right, full bath!
The front is going to need some more work though...
Time to get in there with a tooth brush...
Can't forget about the chrome and grills
Speakers get a cleaning (gently)
Time to start putting her back together...
New power switch arrived and was installed.
Time to make a battery door...
Since the decks were missing so many keys and were virtually useless, David and I decided to mod the radio for Bluetooth and hope for keys down the line. So, I made a cover that I put inside the radio to block the openings and simply drew lines with a sharpie to simulate keys, from 2 feet away, you don't really notice. Better than holes!
Once reassembled, it was time to test to see if it worked.
Right off the bat, I found that with the EQ cleaned, we had full spectrum adjustment and much higher volume, but still one channel working. I tested, pulled out the main board, retested and wasn't able to find the culprit. More testing, thinking about it, searching online and retesting. I traced the signal through the main board, into the amp, tested some more. I was thinking that the amp may have had a bad chip, even thought about pulling the amp and replacing it. I even went as far as to wire in a possible replacement and was testing it when, all of a sudden, it started working????
Certainly, not the way I want a repair to go, as I would prefer to know WHY and what component was causing the issue. That way it won't return. But I have run the system many times and it's still working in stereo. I managed to fix every issue it had accept one and that is, one of the VU meter's is still not working. I still need to open the radio up again to install the Bluetooth module that should show up today, but I am nervous to pull the main board, to get to the VU meter's. I don't want the "Mystery Issue" to return. Better to have stereo sound than stereo meters, but it NEEDS those meter for the "Cool as Hell" factor!
Still undecided on that.
In the end, I think it came out STUNNING!
And how big?
It slightly edges out the J1 on height and just about the same length.
It also has a cool feature in a guitar style strap mounts.
It will go back to David on October 3rd at the Hollywood Boomboxery Meet. Look for pictures of this radio in action there!
In the end, I wouldn't mind having one of these. If you have one and want to part with it, hit me up!
Thanks for letting me work on your baby Dave!
We spent the day going through his extensive collection and he was showing me a recent acquisition. A Rexcel JCX-1000.
I believe this to be a fairly rare radio, I know I have seen them before, but not in big numbers. If any one else has one, please post in the "Collections" section and link it here.
The over all condition of the radio was filthy and hard to determine. It powered up, but none of the equalizer sliders did much, the balance slider did nothing and the volume was low and only had sound out of one channel. Only one VU meter working. Missing all but a few cassette keys. No functioning power switch. It was also missing the battery door.
BUT WHAT A BEAST!
Slightly bigger than a J1 or Helix HX-4700 this thing is HUGE with 8 inch woofers and genuine 3 way speakers system and tons of chrome.
Here she is, dirty as hell
Dave and I talked and came up with a game plan for this radio.
First, the decks are both there and probably re-belt-able, but without deck keys, he's S.O.L.
IF YOU HAVE A PARTS BOX WITH KEYS PLEASE CONTACT ME OR DAVID. Might need a few other things if you have more parts.
First, since I was working on Dave's radio AKA "Mr PBR", I had to do it right
The tear down begins....
Like many radio's this thing had been heavily molested.
The power switch had been soldered and re-soldered many times and finally cut out of the loop with a wire nut on the wires. So to power up the radio, you simply plugged it in
and she was dirty inside
The main board containing the tuner and equalizer came out. I knew the sliders needed to be cleaned to try to suss out the problems of low volume and one channel not working.
Might as well polish the chrome slider controls
Since one of the channels was not working, the previous HACK cut the speaker wires from one side and attached it to the other channel
NEVER DO THIS! Just fix it right :annoyed:Did I mention it was dirty????
One thing that is nice, this radio has it's own separate amplifier (not on main board), so you could technically upgrade the amp if you wanted too (hint hint
)Oh so dirty...
OK, enough is enough, it's time to just tear it all the way down and do it right, full bath!
The front is going to need some more work though...
Time to get in there with a tooth brush...
Can't forget about the chrome and grills
Speakers get a cleaning (gently)
Time to start putting her back together...
New power switch arrived and was installed.
Time to make a battery door...
Since the decks were missing so many keys and were virtually useless, David and I decided to mod the radio for Bluetooth and hope for keys down the line. So, I made a cover that I put inside the radio to block the openings and simply drew lines with a sharpie to simulate keys, from 2 feet away, you don't really notice. Better than holes!
Once reassembled, it was time to test to see if it worked.
Right off the bat, I found that with the EQ cleaned, we had full spectrum adjustment and much higher volume, but still one channel working. I tested, pulled out the main board, retested and wasn't able to find the culprit. More testing, thinking about it, searching online and retesting. I traced the signal through the main board, into the amp, tested some more. I was thinking that the amp may have had a bad chip, even thought about pulling the amp and replacing it. I even went as far as to wire in a possible replacement and was testing it when, all of a sudden, it started working????
Certainly, not the way I want a repair to go, as I would prefer to know WHY and what component was causing the issue. That way it won't return. But I have run the system many times and it's still working in stereo. I managed to fix every issue it had accept one and that is, one of the VU meter's is still not working. I still need to open the radio up again to install the Bluetooth module that should show up today, but I am nervous to pull the main board, to get to the VU meter's. I don't want the "Mystery Issue" to return. Better to have stereo sound than stereo meters, but it NEEDS those meter for the "Cool as Hell" factor!
Still undecided on that.
In the end, I think it came out STUNNING!
And how big?
It slightly edges out the J1 on height and just about the same length.
It also has a cool feature in a guitar style strap mounts.
It will go back to David on October 3rd at the Hollywood Boomboxery Meet. Look for pictures of this radio in action there!
In the end, I wouldn't mind having one of these. If you have one and want to part with it, hit me up!
Thanks for letting me work on your baby Dave!
when it's repaired and working as it should. (Imagine how :superduper: must feel 
. I don't want Dave out there laying down the boogie, with B-Boy's on cardboard, hotties on his jock and then.......
. Funny thing is it didn't look that dirty to me 
