Power supply mod?

[Retro Addict]

Hi, I regrettably bought another boombox this morning. It was one of those purchases you regret almost immediately. I'm sure everyone must've had at least one of those moments.

Why did I buy it? Well I don't know. At least it only cost £6. It's a Hitachi TRK-W55 in reasonable condition I guess, a bit dirty with quite a few marks on it, but it's complete and the tuner works fine. The decks need a service, one doesn't work due to a snapped belt, but the other does... for now. I only bought it because I used to like the look of them. It sounds OK, nothing to write home about though. It has a tone control and a loudness switch, the latter being a saving grace on the box. The LED meter between the decks is quite nice. It has no line-in, so I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with the thing. The power cord is permanently attached (which I despise) and comes out of the battery compartment. Has anyone converted this type of setup, so it has a conventional figure of eight-type socket like other boxes?

Here's the box

 

[k2j]

The tough part is going to be mounting the resepticle so that it's tough enough to withstand the abuse of constant plugging and unplugging. This part would just need to he harvested. Look at the boxes you have behind this one, I'd either give it to the goodwill and count my loss or sell it on. I'm in the same boat with a tone only local impulse buy I had. Ugh

 

[Retro Addict]

I think I'll bin it, k2j. Not worth messing about with. Or as you say donate it to somewhere.

I don't know why I bought it.

 

[Northerner]

Stick it on eBay as 'RARE HOLY GRAIL'...every bugger else does lol

 

[im_alan_partridge]

Ive only had a couple of boxes permanently wired like this and they were also Hitachi's (3d's).

Infact my i931 lasonic is the same also.

 

[k2j]

Well aren't lasonic trc's hardwired? How utterly unfortunate.

 

[Beosystem10]

I don't see the problem with having the lead in my Hitachi 3D40 hard wired into the cabinet of the set. It even has little cutouts in the battery tray moulding for the pins of the plug to locate in so that it doesn't rattle with the bass turned up. (OK, so since it acquired a set of four decent car speakers it has actually become very bass-capable but that's by the way..)
There's no downside to the lead being in there as the battery (comprised of 6 Ds in that one) all fits alongside the lead.

FWIW, I think that Hitachi's not a bad looking thing and it would be well worth painting in some outlandish colour scheme. Maybe the substitution of its woofers for something harder would be a plan too. I'd grab something like that at a roup or in a junk shop purely to fecker about with it. Worst case scenario? Spend a score on speakers and paint, then maybe spend an hour or three making it look desirable and whack it back on eBay as a "retro aye-purd dock". There's one born every minute, etc.

It would be pretty hard to lose money on it given that £6 - at today's exchange rate against beer - is only just the equivalent of 4 pints of decent lager in the village CIU club.

Stick it on eBay as 'RARE HOLY GRAIL'...every bugger else does lol

Yes, that too!