A Somewhat Sad Outcome For This One!

[Nickeccles]

Some of you will remember the Toshiba SX-3 Compo I restored a couple of months ago............

This Aiwa came with it as part of the sale & @ £5 each, it was worth taking a punt!!

This stereo was in a terrible state when it arrived so it was put in boombox room to wait for repair - This was early this year I seem to remember!

I wasn't too happy to find an autoreverse tape mechanism, I really don't like them much at all as well as being somewhat unreliable certainly in boombox form............

I noticed that the rest of it seemed to be a decent spec from I guess, 1985 time - Dolby B, graphic equaliser (Switchable) Line In jacks along with a very decent tuner & amplifier section & lots of led's

I love these!!

So, cassette deck out & new belts fitted after removing the black sludge left over from the disintegrated original belts - This stuff was everywhere inside the machine & it sticks to anything it touches

Damn rubber! lol

I observed quickly after this stage of the repair that the head was free to move both ways without any of the geared teeth that are supposed to position the heads for side A & side B!
In an eggshell - The deck is f**ked & extremely complex to even look at never mind attempt to repair! Yes I was certainly up the boat without a paddle with this one as far as the cassette section goes..............

Not to worry I decided - Lets clean & service the rest of it & see what happens, I can keep looking out for another one for parts, although these things were notorious for the head rotator's gears shearing off rendering them as useful as a chocolate fire!!

Once washed out in the sink with warm soapy water, I noticed that in fact, this stereo has a very nice high quality finish & appearance - It was so filthy & grimy that the beautiful front panel was simply not visible until cleaning!

Great build quality too, everything pluggable for service & repair (Excluding the stupid autoreverse deck) making it easy to put it back together & test the Line in & radio tuner.........

Once reassembled, it looks really nice like it once would have looked! - I will try & find a doner deck as fixing these decks is a headache I intend to pass on

The Sound?

This machine really rocks with a great stereo soundstage & prescence! Output power is very generous too - Such a shame they didn't use a non autoreverse deck, it would now be working if they had done!!

It's heavy too when all together & I guess for £5.00 it was well worth saving - I just hate not being able to restore cassette operation to any job

But for now:

Et Viola!!



https://youtu.be/_e70buvPKIQ

 

[floyd]

That's a nice aiwa not really sure I've ever seen it before probably pretty rare box.

 

[Radio raheem]

love aiwa and the big 3 peice are amongst the best. not sure if iv seen this one either

 

[goodman]

Congrats for this nice AIWA CA-R80. I like solid metal cassette deck and level meters.
There is similar version with 2 cassette, but without level meter - AIWA CA-W90:

 

[PostEnder]

Another respectable restoration effort by our Nick Eccles undertaken with this apparently rare stereo: the Aiwa CA-R80. He again supplies us with a crop of large, quality photographs of the single-deck, three-piece boombox -- many of them being of the blinkingly difficult auto-reverse cassette deck during repair -- and treats us to a YouTube clip of the respectably reconditioned Aiwa playing some uptempo Phil Collins jam. (Like my immediate-senior sister has said, he has this distinct, "stereo" sort of voice, though I also remember her faulting him for an apparently awful, unfair divorce from -- er, one of his wives at the time.)

The ‘R80 is good-looking. But the auto-reverse tape deck of this one has proven too unruly to submit to Mr Eccles' corrections of solder and screwdriver. So he pipes Mr Collins' plaint about not-nice people through the LINE IN function from his smartphone. (Or is that some standalone audio player reposed atop the Aiwa? And, you know, at the risk of trying to puff myself up, some of those dark-background images remind me of the couple photos that I took of my humbler CS-600U's tape-deck mechanism, plastic smokestack lookalikes and all…)


So, is there any sneezing at the restoration efforts by Nick Eccles? Certainly not. It’s a great effort.

 

[MyOhMy]

It's such a shame this absolutely gorgeous box had the deck problem that prevented a total resto but you still brought this back to it's original beauty. Seriously, I just love the look of this elegant looking box. I have a CA-100H (Stereo 100 Carry Component System) which is a bit of a weighty beast at 10.1kg/22.26lbs but has an awesome sound quality so I'd like to add more of the range to my collect - space permitting! I've just scrolled back up the page for another look and, Boy, the looks on this box doesn't disappoint.

Good work, it's great to read the details of the resto from the opening of the box to the blood, sweat and tears. Again, Good Work!

As for the Aiwa:

 

[Nickeccles]

Many of Phil Collins have his signature stereo delay between left & right both vocals & keyboard chords - I love this effect along with the slight ambient echo the same as many george michael songs! These were very complex to achieve using many overdubs & harmonies many of phil's songs are just him in overdub & vocoder overdrive!! I love his albums never tire of genesis the collins years either!! Yeah this Aiwa is gorgeous to look at & it rocks at high volume too!

 

[samovar]

This is a wonderful Aiwa Nick, rare and with an unusual -- and beautiful and colourful -- led. Hat off to your repair work -- even if incomplete, it was a tour de force!

The Aiwa minicombos of this generation (CA, CA-W, Stereo CS) are among the most elegant and best sounding around. Even the basic models, such as the lovely Stereo CS 240, are endowed with AUS and DSL, have great looks and perform much better than expected.

Yours is a keeper, no doubt about it