Sharp GF-9494 restoration

Hi all,

I acquired this big box 2 years ago, wishing to use it for an indoor aeromodelism exhibition, where we were 9 guys flying with homemade "angry birds plane", while playing music of the game (on a tape, of course !)...
That was a very good excuse to buy this boombox !!!

It was in good cosmetic condition, except the metallic faceplate.
I had to change the capstan tyre (but as an aeromodeller, I've got RC fuel line), and the pinch roller too.

The picture of eBay, where I bought it. You can't really see the very marked faceplate...





A lot of cleaning, removing tons of dust, erasing stains, respraying, polishing, soldering... And I added a li-po battery, 14,8V - 5000mAh with a low batt alarm (if you over discharge a lipo batt, you'll kill it) giving a lot of autonomy (I don't really know how much time, but more than 3 hours)...






I removed the faceplate and tried to fix it. It's better, but far from perfect.






This box has been fixed before, I found an underpowered 12v 0,62A PSU inside !!! I guess it should be 15V and more than 1A ??? The sound on high volume was bad, and is now louder and far better while operating on battery...








I'm going to post a query later on "boombox & parts wanted" for a faceplate and for the psu...


And the final result (for the moment) :

Great job!

A nice face plate will make a World of difference.

Excellent work! How did you remove the face plate?

Adhesives soften with heat and then the part can be gently pulled out. One should be careful that heat applied shouldn't go over the plastic deflection temperature, or else it with distort the plastic permanently. Blow dryers can be used to warn the Al face plate gently to pull it off. I'm pretty sure that method was used here.

That's it, I used an hairdryer, heated the plate and pulled it slowly...

BoomboxLover48 said:

....... plastic deflection temperature.......

Click to expand...

Cool, it seems I'm never too old to learn something. Now, remembering is another matter!

Great job. Sure miss my GF9494!!

MyOhMy said:

....... plastic deflection temperature.......

Click to expand...

Cool, it seems I'm never too old to learn something. Now, remembering is another matter!

Click to expand...

The heat deflection temperature or heat distortion temperature (HDT) is the temperature at which a polymer or plastic sample deforms under a specified load. The load can be from any angle inside or from the resting position of the boombox.

BoomboxLover48 said:

....... plastic deflection temperature.......

Click to expand...

Cool, it seems I'm never too old to learn something. Now, remembering is another matter!

Click to expand...

The heat deflection temperature or heat distortion temperature (HDT) is the temperature at which a polymer or plastic sample deforms under a specified load. The load can be from any angle inside or from the resting position of the boombox.




Many thanks. I felt I understood the meaning of plastic deflection temperature even though my non technical brain could never have said as you did.

Nice work, that's looking really clean- I have recently acquired a messy but mostly working GF9494X and am about to embark on a similar journey to yours. Do you have a source for the battery pack and battery undervoltage alarm?
Did you need to cut the case to get the battery pack to fit?
I'm also planning on converting the phono in to line in and maybe adding an APTX Bluetooth receiver and USB charging socket.

Ceestarrs said:

Do you have a source for the battery pack and battery undervoltage alarm?
Did you need to cut the case to get the battery pack to fit?
I'm also planning on converting the phono in to line in and maybe adding an APTX Bluetooth receiver and USB charging socket.

Click to expand...

Source for the battery pack :
This one or this one and you'll have to buy the corresponding plug too.
Voltage indicator alarm
The battery pack and the under voltage alarm fits in the compartment (takes half less place than original batteries). So I did'nt cut anything

The GF-9494 do turn up quite a bit over this side of the pond. I will always like this model, it brings back great memories.

Lovely vintage Sharp.


Gotta admit, learned a nice little tip for removing that face plate - thanks for sharing.

Thanks bugpat, really helpful : )