Today at a yard sale I got a Dynavox "stereo Hi-Fi" record player with a table radio tossed in, for 10$. Pretty nice condx. for the type of covering. Seems to play 78's OK with no hum. Needs pots cleaned and has a mechanical burbling sound like something is worn or dried out in the drive. Maybe motor? Ran at all 4 speeds. I was interested cause it was cheap and plays in the 78 speed. I have alot of old 78's that need checked. Anyway, I find little info on the Dyanavox brand, except maybe this is a late 50's machine. Anyone out there that can ID the model number on this? Uses a Ronette TO-400-OV cartridge. Those seem to be cheap but this one seems good.

Dynavox was a small brand that does not turn up much. In over 20 years, I've only had one Dynavox record player and it was a low end manually operated commercial model that would play 16" transcription records. It was very cheaply made and I ended up getting rid of it. I think this company appeared right after WWII and hung around into the late '60's.

That is a VM changer in your unit and the noise you hear is likely the idler wheel that has become hard as a rock. Your only option there is to have the wheel rebuilt.

My first record player in the late '50s was a Dynavox kiddy player. The crystal cartridge would die in it fairly often. My mom would give me $10 and send me a couple blocks up to the radio shop to get it fixed. I had no idea that she called ahead and set it all up. The guy would put on a whole new tone arm with cartridge for less than $10 bucks while I waited. He would repair it on the front bench so I could watch. To this day I have never seen another Dynavox in person. I've seen a few on eBay and have learned that Dynavox was one of the players in the '50s phonograph market. Some of their hi-fi portables were as good as any competing Zenith or RCA.

Someone gave me one of those old stereo dynavox portables.
I gutted it for the guts and tossed the case out.

Has S/E 6BQ5 outputs and a 12AX7 1st audio.
Thing was ugly too.

I thought the spring suspended changer itself looked to be fairly solid, perhaps not in the "junky" category, and other than the noise, it seems to run smoothly. I guess I need to get in to look at the idler wheel, etc. on it. I do know that when you switch it "off" the noise stops and the platter turns freely without noise afterwards. Hey, it played the Four Freshmen and Caruso pretty well, if not with a lot of volume, thru the twin speakers. Has tone controls and jacks for external speaker or speakers. I have piles of old 78's and I dang sure am not gonna buy a dedicated high end 78 TT and cartridge for those. I have a top end 80's Denon TT and MC for LPs and it is not even hooked up right now. The Ronette carts can be had for 18$ on ebay, apparently NOS. The vinyl(?) on the case is in very nice condx. for that type of material, too. My other choices for 78's are a small Victrola, and a 1930 Philco player/TRF console with a gigantus early RCA magnetic pickup.

Dynavox currently manufacturers augmentative communication devices for people with disabilities. I'm not sure if this is the same firm but it is the same name.

78's were made for around four decades. By the late '40s they were getting to be fairly wide range and noiseless. By the '50s they were high fidelity by the standards of the day. It's amazing how good a '50s 78-rpm record in good condition can sound on a magnetic cartridge. GE introduced the Variable Reluctance cartridge in the late '40s, about the same time that cutter heads made a step change advance from 6kHz to 14kHz in high end response. They make a 78 of the same era sound as smooth as silk. They called the cartridge the Electronic Reproducer.

1947 GE model 14 78-rpm record player.
Transformer operated 5-watt single ended 6V6 output driving a single 8-inch PM speaker.

Those VM changers were used by virtually everyone at some point. They are usually easy to repair and parts can still be obtained from www.thevoiceofmusic.com.

I'd stay away from NOS cartridges as much as possible. Even though they are new, they will go bad from sitting unused. Either the suspension will become hard or they will lose output. After all the bad NOS cartridges that I've gotten, I try to stick with current production cartridges.

If yours looks nice and especially if it has 6BQ5 tubes in it, I'd certainly fix it.

You also need to re-cap the amp and check for any resistors that have drifted off value.

It has that Ronette cartridge with the "flip over" feature for 78s or smaller grooves. The thing is, that it claims to be "stereo". I notice an extra pair of wires in the arm, that are taped back out of the way. I presume it might have been designed for some sort of stereo cart, but also expect it was maybe a crystal or ceramic stereo type. Will have to see how things are connected inside. I assume it is one of the V-M 1200 series changers, just based on appearances. As for how to get the changer free from the base to inspect it, I am not sure about that. May have to take the whole board out to examine it for a model number. Seems that there are V-M enthusiasts out there and one website is selling parts for them. Hope the noises I hear are a drive part and not the motor itself. Pretty clean unit and would think it was taken care of, at least till recently.

Here is a link to a June 22, 1959 Billboard Magazine showing a Dynavox model 898 that looks similar to yours. Check out page 33. It shows a matching remote stereo speaker and sold for $169 so it wasn’t a toy. That’s equivalent to over $1300 today.

There is some additional info about Dynavox’s 1960 model line up on page 42. They only manufactured portables and yours appears to be the top of the line. It claims a 14-watt amplifier so that would mean it probably has a singe 6BQ5 output tube on each channel. It’s probably a keeper.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WCAEAA ... ox&f=false

Yea it looks like the 898 except for the variation that the cover opens the other way, towards the rear. Hmm. Well I have plenty of good 6BQ5 or Eur. equivalents if needed. It probably would be a parts machine if the case were all torn up or something. Still need to figure out the mono cartridge issue and if both channels work or whatever, but for 78's and many 45's, it is irrelevent.