Poll on common Blockbuster and SCR-8 issue.

IF you own or have owned a GE Blockbuster or Realistic SCR-8, did you experience......

  • perfectly working deck at the time you acquired it (used examples only)

    Votes: 2 14.3%

  • broken deck and never attempted to fix

    Votes: 3 21.4%

  • broken deck and fixed it after fresh belt replacement

    Votes: 1 7.1%

  • broken deck which wouldn't work even after fresh belt replacements

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • broken deck and you observed that the heads won't raise high enough to contact the tape

    Votes: 5 35.7%

  • broken deck with the head issue described (above) but you were able to fix it.

    Votes: 5 35.7%

  • I owned more than 1 with broken decks

    Votes: 8 57.1%
  • Total voters
    14
Status
Not open for further replies.
Superduper

Superduper

Moderator
Staff member
After seeing 2 recent threads about GE decks with the infamous head issue, I am really curious about exactly how prevalent this issue actually is. I suspect that most if not all decks on the beloved GE 3-5259 Blockbuster and Realistic SCR-8 14-778A boomboxes are now suffering from the broken head mounts but I'm just guessing since I've not personally owned one single example without this issue and I've owned at least 4. I'm hoping this poll might shed some light on this.

Rules:
If you purchased the boombox brand new, obviously it WAS working at that time, in which case, please ignore the first choice and use it's present condition to answer.
Answer only if you own or have owned these boomboxes, since this poll otherwise doesn't affect you.
You may answer if you have a model that has the same or similar deck with this same issues, (probably other GE models.)
You can make more than 1-choice, in case more than 1 choice applies to you.

I tried to include all the possible choices I could think of. If there are other choices you think I should add, let me know, although not sure I can change this poll or not after the thread is posted.

Depending on how this poll goes, I might start other such polls on other models.
 
Reli

Reli

Boomus Fidelis
I own 2 of them. FF and RW work, but Play doesn't lift the roller high enough to contact the capstan, and of course the reel doesn't turn either.
 
  • Like
Reactions: K dabras
Superduper

Superduper

Moderator
Staff member
Reli, the pinch roller & heads move together in unison. If the heads bracket is busted, the pinch roller will have trouble raising high enough to contact the capstan needle.
 
Superduper

Superduper

Moderator
Staff member
Well, there has been 10 voters who participated and doesn't look like there will be many more votes so lets see if we can make some sense of the votes.

I note that at this time, there were 7 votes (out of 10 voters) who stated they owned more than 1 example with broken decks. Therefore we can safely conclude that there were at least 17 examples considered, possibly more. Of those 17 examples, only 1 vote was for an example with a working deck at time item was procured. That is a working/broken deck ratio of 1:17. Of the votes, 1 vote says the deck was fixed after fresh belts were installed. So we can conclude that at least 2/17 had a functional or intact head mount and pinch roller tension spring setup since 1 was working and 1 was fixed with belts. The actual percentage of decks with belt issues vs broken head mount/spring issue can't be ascertained since there was no ability for voters to actually answer by inputting a number, so we don't know how many examples of each. Additionally some examples were never fixed. Unfortunately our polling feature is pretty basic and I wasn't able to structure it in a way that would give detailed more meaningful answers. I was going to try to make a poll on survey monkey or one of the other online poll sites but didn't want to pay a subscription to make 1 poll (free members only can make simple polls). Therefore, this poll is interesting and it's clear that most decks on these units are broken but it doesn't really answer the question I really wanted to know Which is what is the percentage of decks that have belt issues vs those suffering from the infamous broken plastic head mount.
 
trippy1313

trippy1313

Member (SA)
Lol. Norm you make it sound so scientific. I love it. I'm such a simpleton I looked at the results and said, "Dang, looks decks are a weak-link on these."
 
Hisrudeness

Hisrudeness

Member (SA)
I’ve had 6 of these. Three were cured with belt changing and 3 will need the 3D transport. (Already ordered)
Wasn’t able to put all that on the voting poll.
 
Tinman

Tinman

Member (SA)
I've had 3 SCR-8s and 1 Blockbuster, all had the broken plastic spring retainers.
The repair part wasn't available so I repaired all 4 with my own fix and still own 1 SCR-8.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom