NATIONAL R 545 B - Vintage Boombox.

Status
Not open for further replies.

SUCCESS

Member (SA)
May 14, 2009
53
0
6
Hi people !!!

Here is my National Panasonic R 545B.

A very vintage unit from National, as you will see.

It has 3 band radio without FM and a tapedeck. The tapedeck is the same used in the RF-520. One of the most solid I've ever seen. The kind of quality you may expect from National.

On the front: volume, tone and fine tuning. On the top it the dial window, the multifunction vu-meter and the tape/radio selector (push button).

Main tuning and band selector are on the right side.

Sound quality is good+. We are talking about and early boombox with a fullrange 12 cm speaker.
It has good output power (1.6W) and nice quality. Highs are so clean and good bass (by its size).
It has got an AUX IN !!!!!!!!!!!. Also mic in remote and SPK out.

Look the contruction !!!!. All it's front is plastic covered by metal (no painted plastic).
And it's back is covered by a sort of leather !!!. It has 2 covers, the main could be removed to access to the battery and the AC cable (which isn't detachable). And look carefully, it has a place to put a cassette !!!!!!!!. Forgot about the drawer !!!!
There are places for the earphones and the AC cable.

My Work ....

When purchased, apart form the dirty, I discovered that the whole pinch roller assy was mising and it's moting point broken !!!!!. A nearly trash deck. Also, the auto-stop feature is tied to the pinch roller (very rare) ... so no autostop also.
I decided to fix it anyway. I adapted the pinch roller from another mecha and built a mounting arm for it. Lots of work to get this thing working fine and without eating tapes.
After that, I decided to fix the autostop issue (wont work until you put the original pinch assy).
I decided to built a little board which detects the movement from the counter to stop the radio when the tape stops moving.
If someone is interested I can post the details in the tech talk section |-)

I'm very happy to get this baby running again.

ENJOY !!!!!

National 545



Top



Back



Main cover removed. See the places for the AC cord, earphones and cassette.



Mecha fixed ...



Auto stop solution



Pedro.
 

Kerotan

Member (SA)
May 9, 2009
78
0
0
Manchester, UK
That is a nice little box! Great job on getting it fixed up, that's some good skills! I love the design, the double cover is pretty unique :-D
 

devol-toni

Member (SA)
May 15, 2009
1,419
2
38
58
Macedonia, Skopje City
Nice find success, I love the national panasonic boomboxes. :yes:
Seems that all early models without FM reception is named only with "R".
I found before couple of days on flea the same model like in my avatar "RF-5310B", but this model do not have FM band, only MW, SW1, SW2 and SW3 band, and the name is "R-5310B" :-O .
Probably the date of production is older.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.