Magnecord INC Historical Archival Material Part 1

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• I almost cried for joy at finding this new addition to your Magnecorder pages!!

  For the last two weeks, I have been in process of trying to restore my Dad's early Magnecorder PT6-A (PT6-AH transport and PT6-J amp unit) back to working condition. Dad was an organist and choir director, and used this machine into the 1970s, until Parkinson's disease robbed him of the last 20 years of his life.
  He left me hundreds of tapes made on this machine which I want to archive and transfer to digital (not because it is better, but because I want my kid and family to be able to easily play these precious recordings of family events and dad's music.
  He even recorded what was billed as "the last Steam Train in Georgia" in September 1959 with the PT6 and the original tape will send goosebumps up my spine 52 years later!
  I have replaced all capacitors, and most resistors, but still have hum which increases with gain/volume knob in amp. This is happening with tape transport unconnected so noise is originating in the amp unit, but I don't know where. Any thoughts or suggestions?

  Also, any hints of where I might find new idler wheels? The tape transport is EXTREMELY noisy due to the old tires being bad. It does work, but just awful noisy. I have just purchased two more machines off eBay this week, which I have not yet seen but bought them to have some spare parts. May be able to restore them also once I find the trouble with my original one.

  Looking at the factory pictures is neat! Wish I could step through the time portal and go grab a few of those brand new parts!

  Do you know anyone else who loves these machines and who may have some parts?

• buying extra machines on ebay is the way to go. good luck. u should expect some minimal hum with the unit, but it sounds like you have some issue. hum increasing with the gain knob is not a function of a bad cap, i would imagine; it might could be that the input tranformer is picking up the power supply hum, ppossibly. tough to say. does the hum persist regardless of whether the unit is in 'p.a. amplifier' mode or 'tape playback' mode?

  • Chris, a couple days later, I have now eliminated 90 percent of the hum. Not sure what the cause was; I rechecked my internal wiring which was all correct, but I did add some heatshrink on a couple capacitor leads that were bare. Also rerouted some wires, and for whatever reasons, it now is quite usable. I would like it still quieter, but it is listenable.
    The hum before, and now, is MUCH louder in either REC or AMP modes; when in LISTEN (play) mode it is a lot quieter. Still, there is too much hum to make clean transfers to digital. I have to make it quieter yet. One suspect cause is I had to replace all the electrolytic capacitors from inside the "cans" with separate, individual caps which I had to mount under the chassis. This was because the original 4 section multi-cans are no longer available from any source I could find. The original Magnecorder alternate supplier part numbers do not come up in their websites.
    I have found a company who will refurbish the original "pucks" - idler wheels with new rubber. Costs around $35 each plus postage. This will be the way to go since, even if I could locate NOS originals, their rubber would be so dried up it would be no good anyway.
    At this point, what I need MOST is to get a copy of an ORIGINAL MAGNECORD repair manual for the PT6-A or AH. I have to disassemble the tape transport and it is full of little parts and springs and stuff that look like they could "explode" all over and get lost. There is a right way to dismantle it and I need to know how before I do it the wrong way! Somebody out there must have either some original Magnecord Inc books or some copies. Could you inquire of the gentleman who provided you the photos recently? He may know the whereabouts of remaining factory materials. For the most part, these machines are amazingly well built. Just rubber tires and internal electronics leave a little bit to be desired.

    • May have original repair manual, for this recorder, have 1000's of original ELECTRONIC repair manuals from 40'-60's that i pickup up years ago. Just cruising the net, just bought one of these ph6 at a garage sale, was the ladies grandfathers recorder. looks real clean also. comes in a case. reel to reel in back, inputs and vu meters in front. looks clean, will probably sell in the near future, if interested let me know, can send pictures. haven't fired up yet. or really care to. weighs a ton though. can also call 7168677033

• Hello again Chris,
  Does anyone know when Magnecord changed between the rectangular speaker cutout to the round, or the other way 'round? In all these photos I see only the round speakers, but my PT6-AH has the rectangular shaped cutout.

  Also, could you possibly contact "D" - the son of John Boyers - to ask if he or his dad may have any surviving ORIGINAL factory service manuals or actual Magnecord company materials?

  Reg Smith

  • Hi Reg. I know that D. reads these pages, so he will certainly see your plea. I do hope to receive more materials from D. soon.
    In the meanwhile, you might want to search online for a SAMS photofact for this unit. You could also try contacting studio electronics in Burbank CA.

    good luck
    c.

  • Reg,
    The speaker "order" was round to rectangular. I happen to posses what is very likely the earliest known PT6, the engineering sample which Dad brought home for me to play with when I was about 10 years old. I have amp from the same exact time period, (also an engineering sample), and it has a round speaker cutout. At some time very shortly into the production of the pair, they went to a rectangular speaker cutout- Perhaps it can be dated by looking at photos in "Magnecord Ink", the company newsletter.
    I do have many original company service manuals, but they deal almost entirely with schematics, not mechanics. I'll have a good look through them and see if there's any "exploded" views for you.
    Cheers,
    Dave Boyers

• I just spent three hour hours last night just doing one of the muti section cans on my PT6-J. You can get the 20/20/20/20 450V cans from Tubesandmore.com but they are $30 something, but it was a perfect drop in replacement. I found a JJ mutisection can of 40/20/20/20 450 V to replace the 40/30/20/10 can but I have read that it should be OK. The ground is one lug instead of the four tabs on the original. I'm just about done replacing all caps and a ton of resistors that were out of spec. I didn't want to completely rewire everything so getting the .05 caps in there was hard without having longer leads. Everything seems jammed in there. I hope the long leads don't lead to noise.

• Hi,
  As a (European) collector of Magnecord products and interested by the company's history and contributions to the art of sound recording I greatly appreciate the rare informations and documents you provided here. (especially the photos of the early Magnecord factory,my deepest thanks to D.Boyers for making these available to us).
  Now I'm eagerly awaiting for Part Two of this series,hope it will come soon... with more original pictures and rare documents. Magnecord's history certainly need to be better documented on the web because their products were innovative,of great historical significance and of the highest quality, some being still in service today nearly 60 years after they left the factory... the PT-6 series were probably the longer lasting tape transports ever produced , a perfect exemple of clever and efficient engineering.
  Thanks again for your work,
  Nick

• Nick,
  I've just shipped off to Chris a CD loaded with the rest of my Magnecord historical documents. In the early years, Magnecord published a 4-page newsletter/promotional piece entitled "Magnecord Ink" in which they highlighted the hundreds of unusual uses people found for the PT6 and its cousins. That, plus some other sales materials went into today's mail and Chris should have it in a couple of days, (Ohio to Connecticut). I'm sure he'll have the stuff up & ready to share as soon as humanly possible. Thanks for your kind words about Magnecord; I'll pass those on to my 95-year-old father, one of the founding fathers, who will be very pleased to hear of your hobby.
  Cheers,
  Dave Boyers

  • Dave:
    Any chance of getting one of the CD's with the historical documents? I"ve got about 4 Magnecords in the collection ( a 100 Magnecordette, a few 748's and 1028's ,etc).
    Thanks!
    Mike Zuccaro
    mjzuccaro@aol.com
    858-271-8294

• Quick tech comment for anyone repairing the PT-6. I did the muti section cans on mine and then was told by my repair guy when he checked it out, that the 450V cans would be better off if they were in the 500 and up range, which you can get. The amp is pushing some high Voltage. He also suggested wire wound resistors near the preamp tube since they can be cleaner sounding. I've done a few recordings with mine so far and It it sounds pretty good. Also, the input transformer is muti tapped, mine is wired for 250ohm but yours could be wired for 50ohm. I tried a 50ohm mic and with all that gain, it didn't seem to matter much but I'm not sure about what effect on tone there might be. It would be cool to have a toggle installed to switch between the two. Hope this might help anyone looking for some info on these as preamps.

  • Thanks steve. on yr 2 points: I have not measured the B+ voltage in my units, but it's entirely possible that voltage could push past 450; most amps with PP 6L6s get past 450 at some point or another; this is why the bigger Fenders (super, etc) have series filter caps in the first filter. Regarding wwound resistors in the pre-amp; again, always a good idea IMO. you don't need to change ALL the resistors, but you will notice less white noise in any tube amp if you replace the plate resistors in the preamp stage with wire-wounds. so yeah good advice!

    • Chris, is there a magnechordette schematic in your possession? need to wire a transformer that was ripped from mine 🙏

      • Hi Richard, I checked the files and no, sorry I do not have. I would suspect that any 'pro' guitar shop in a metropolitan area should be able to service it for you, it's a very simple device. good luck - CR

• I actually have a 33 1/3 2 album set of the "Sounds of Last Steam Train in Georgia! One of my brothers was fascinated with trains and my uncle, who worked for WMAZ gave this to him

  • A great recording. I have it and occasionally take it to high end stereo places. They quake at the sight.....

• I just came across your wonderful website.A few years ago,I bought a Magnacord PT-6 tape transport and the companion PT-6J amplifier at a antique radio meet near Rochester,N.Y. I would like to restore this tape recorder,but I need the schematic-diagram and the special connectors the connect the transport to the amplifier section.
  I can remember hearing a Magnacord PT-6 tape recorder several years ago,and was VERY much impressed with its sound quality. I also have a collection of early disc,wire,and tape recorders. I sure would love to find either info or the Magnacorder SD-1 wire recorder. I look forward to your reply. Say hello to your father for me. Also I had a Magnacord M-30 tape deck several years ago.It was my first Broadcast-Quality tape deck and again I was VERY much impressed with its sound quality.I always regreted selling it a few years ago. I hope to find another M-30 tape deck sometime.
  Best regards, Gaylord Ewing

• As a pro audio engineer who has followed some of the history of Magnecord, I was most delighted to run across the photos and other information supplied by John Boyer's son. A great contribution!!