I found this nifty old stereo-furniture piece at a consignment shop that had a center section that folded down to reveal a hidden turntable. I have kind of been on the lookout for an old stereo to refinish and contemporize but I had wanted (and still do) a piece from an older era that might be a bit steam-punk when I was done with it… well since I have a piece from the 60s/70s I like to think this came out more disco-punk 😉
I don’t seem to have captured any pictures of work-in-progress so unfortunately you’ll have to take my word for it that this was in pretty rough shape. It needed a bit of refinishing so I opted to paint the trim in a darker hue to pull off a bit of two tone that plays off the grid lines, a good cleaning, touch-up, a lot of coats of lacquer, and I repainted the gold accents on the Magnavox pin/logo too! I also added the period legs although I really think I am going to still add a shelf between the legs at the bottom because it just feels too visually unbalanced…
So at first I leveraged the existing amplifier in this but it really sounded horrible, and not horrible in a vintage warm toned tube sort of way, just scratchy and course. I took a gamble on these cheap plate amplifiers and let me tell you, they are quite the bang for your buck! The sound quality is amazing, subwoofer out is nice, controls are perfect and heat generated is minimal (off of a 19vdc laptop charger power adapter I repurposed). I grappled for a little bit on what I wanted to do about the original control knobs versus the new control knobs on the amplifier. The spacing was simply incompatible in any way for me to keep the original controls and have them control the new amp… until… I had a neat idea! I retooled the old controls by breaking down the potentiometers they were part of and cutting off and machining the ends to still turn, not pull out, and have a center hole down its core. Into this core I put a stiff yet flexible wire (the resilient sort used to close up pools) and crimped it and then ran the other end into the control pots ,that I drilled cores into, on the new amp. This allowed me to route the rotation on the control back into the furniture housing to the new control on the new amp! Here is a picture when I was still testing this with a proof of concept using plastic tubing as the control wires:
And finally I replaced the turn table with a bit of trim and a framed touch screen wired into the receiver audio and the power. In addition to installing my music apps and a killer disco themed wallpaper, I installed an app that keeps the screen from going to a lock screen thereby preventing anyone from ever having to unlock it.
And finally, here is a little video of it:
Other pics I found in better light that show the finish a bit better:
