New Member from Adelaide, South Australia - looking for help with an Akai PJ-33

[Gretsch6136]

Hi all,

I am a life-long hi-fi enthusiast, however this has generally been home hi-fi. For portable music I do still own a Sony Walkman WM-6 which I purchased new back in 1985, along with an iRiver flash player, and my phone of course!

I recently purchased an Akai PJ-33 boombox because its design is unique and really attracted me. I remember seeing these new in the shops back in the '80s. This has been a fun little project of cleaning it up, and fixing a few little broken parts and now its running well. However it does have a tweeter that is not working in one speaker. I am looking for some help in troubleshooting the tweeter and finding out if it can be repaired or if someone might have a working spare available?

I hope you more experienced people can point me in the right direction.

Thanks,

Mark

 

[hopey]

Try Jeycar for tweeter replacements

 

[Gretsch6136]

Try Jeycar for tweeter replacements

Thanks Hopey. It seems Jaycar stocks only one tweeter and its very unlike the tweeters in the Akai speakers. It might serve as a last resort though.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Gretsch6136]

Great news! I found an Akai PJ-W55 on Ebay that was being sold for parts. It had the same type and size of tweeter. I purchased it and have now successfully replaced the blown tweeter in my PJ-33 with a donor from the PJ-W55.

Also the speakers have passive radiators in the rear. The foam has rotted on these and the radiator discs had fallen out. I found on Ebay some 3.5" replacement passive radiator discs with butyl rubber surrounds. They only cost about $3 each.

This weekend I will clean off the old foam off the pressed baskets and glue in the new passive radiator discs. The speakers should then be working as new and providing the bass response which has been lacking!

 

[Gretsch6136]

Well the new passive radiators have made a huge difference to the sound of this unit. Its really punchy with good controlled bass and a nice balance across the frequencies.

SUCCESS!!!

 

[Hisrudeness]

Well done!

 

[dubout]

I just googled it, that's a very pretty machine!

 

[Gretsch6136]

Thanks for the encouragement! Yes it is a great looking machine. Seems to come in two colour schemes. The common one is Silver with dark red, or charcoal and with black. The one I have is the charcoal/black combo.

I also purchased a Blutooth transmitter/receiver with DAB+ Digital radio from Jaycar. Its running through the Line In of the Akai and is fantastic! I can play my entire FLAC CD Library through it from my computer and the digital broadcast channels sound pretty good too! It has increased the utility of the lovely Akai no end!