Cabinet Restoration

I've never been one to pay a lot of money for "kit" for quite a few decades, (unless you can count a Yamaha Tyros 5 leccy piano and a YTS62 tenor sax).

I've a 1970s Leak 2000 tuner/amp. I paid about sixty quid for it on eBay about fifteen years ago, it replaced a Philips 790 that I bought new in 1972. The "deal breaker" was a replacement had to have din sockets like the Philips, I couldn't be assed about having to change the leads. An advantage was that it had sockets for disc, tape, cassette, aux. I use them all except "tape."

I use it mostly for this.


The Rock-Ola wallboxes cost around sixty quid each more than fifteen years ago, before people other than we vinyl jukebox owners knew you could use them for something other than a telephone directory. Try getting a good one with un-pitted chrome and working, at any price now. The second-hand 3rd gen iPods I use were less than a tenner each. The batteries don't need to hold a charge.

But a month ago the Leak started "motorboating." "So I sent it to the menders."
In the meantime I spotted one on eBay, which I was assured worked fine, but had a scruffy cabinet, lots of scratches..
They can go for well over £150, but I got it for £56.

I was aware that the "cabinet" is actually three bits of real veneer on... whatever, attached by a total of four screws to a metal frame. Some amplifiers cabinets of a similar era have a "faux" wood vinyl skin.



One side was worse than the other, it had probably been stored for years end-on. So I just sanded them down and polished them.

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The top came up well I just needed to add a bit of wood dye to the polish after this.

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Job done!
It's in perfect working order, right down to the AFC mute controls.
The original came back, checked over, but wouldn't "motorboat," I guess a capacitor might have been picking up something from some of my other gear.
I've now got it in my "office" (our box bedroom), it replaced a vintage Rotel tuner/amp,
 
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