I purchased this General Electric Radio a little while ago for a mere 25 bucks. The radio still works. However, the cassette deck requires some work, as some time between now and the past 30 years, the belt crumpled and snapped. This can be replaced though, and the loud buzzing sound it gave off caused me quite the scare!
After opening her up, I got a good look inside at the circuitry. Unfortunately, most of the small plastic parts that the screws drive into broke off, which I will use super glue on when the times comes. My primary focus was the tape deck, which produced a loud "buzzing" sound when I attempted to play a cassette.
While this image may not appear to show much, by looking closer you can see that the belt isn't present on the motor and large gear.
One thing I also came across while working was a mystery AC Port. I searched all over the web for information on this specific port, but found nothing.
As of typing this, I am currently dealing with ordering the belt, I will update this once I have installed this new belt. Until then, I will continue to document my further work on restoring this player.
Upon initially purchasing this radio, I noticed that the sticker within the Tape Deck, (this is merely for looks), was in a dire state.
At first, this was the least of my concerns as I began testing the radio and the speaker (both of which are okay).
When I got about cleaning up the set, I noticed that the sticker was crumpling and peeling in many places,
because of this, I tried to peel and remove any significantly affected areas, and cleaned up all the pieces of the sticker scattered about.
(see the picture of the radio at the top of the page as compared to the picture of the sticker above to see what I did)
You are probably thinking that the sticker looks way worse as compared to the original picture, however, one thing that picture fails to capture
is that the layer in which the graphics were printed on was crumpling (almost like dust) rapidly.
Now, if you paid any attention to anything above, you'll know that my primary focus right now is the tape deck.
While working, I noticed how much of the sticker had crumpled and fallen inside the components, which was not good at all.
Because of this, I made the painful decision to remove the 40 year old sticker (this is merely a guess of the age). The picture above shows what it looked like during removal.
I initially planned to remove the sticker carefully using a hair dryer, and hoped to preserve the graphics as good as I could to laminate and eventually scan.
After scanning, I would bring it into Photoshop and repair the graphics to remake and reprint a new sticker for the tape deck. However, things turned sour.
I was aware of the bad state of the sticker for a while (which is why I planned to laminate it to prevent further damage), but upon trying to carefully remove the sticker, I found that the remaining graphics simply crumpled off.
After that, I realized there wasn't any hope in preserving the original sticker, and I fully removed the remaining debris.
As painful as it was to remove a sticker that was printed when Yugoslavia still existed, I had the reassurance that paper debris wouldn't get caught up in the components anymore.
I am currently searching for an original decal or scan online of this graphic. (It appeared on many GE Cassette Players of the time).
I have gone as far as reaching out to GE themselves, and if I cannot find it online, I will follow my original plan of remaking it in Photoshop.
If you have any information on where I could potentially find a reprint/scan/detailed photo copy of this decal, please Contact Me.