Hi, Everyone. My mother inherited quite a collection of records from my grandmother and asked me to look for a turntable for her. I picked up a Philco-Ford S1888WA radio/turntable console at a local (Atlanta) vintage furniture store. Its got an automatic turntable and solid-state electronics. It's producing a garbled (distorted?) sound and I haven't been able to pin-point the source so I'm hoping you can help me.

For sample pictures visit:
front - http://silverliver.nfshost.com/temp/01.jpg
dials - http://silverliver.nfshost.com/temp/02.jpg
turntable - http://silverliver.nfshost.com/temp/03.jpg
guts with legend - http://silverliver.nfshost.com/temp/04.jpg
model# etc - http://silverliver.nfshost.com/temp/05.jpg

For sample sound (640KB, wav) visit:
http://silverliver.nfshost.com/temp/01.wav

The system has a line-in (says "Tape/Input") and two line-out ("EXT SPEAKERS" and "TAPE RECORD"). I've run the following tests:

1) play turntable or radio on internal speakers = garbled sound
2) play mp3 player (through line-in) on internal speakers = garbled sound and lower volume (but not too bad)
3) play turntable or radio on external speakers (good speakers) = garbled sound
4) play mp3 player (through line-in) on external speakers = garbled sound

NOTE: same results after playing with the R/L balance

and

5) jiggle wires here and there = sound improved slightly after jiggling the connection that receives wires from the far-side speaker and sends to circuit board (see picture 04.jpg), but after playing with that connection for a while I wasn't able to make further progress. Only a slight improvement there.

There is a single rusted connection somewhere in there. After I unplugged it I only got sound from one speaker but it was still coming garbled. I also dusted the circuitry with compressed air, although there wasn't much dust at all.

I'm going to continue jiggling wires until I come up with more tests and/or give up.

Any ideas?

Many thanks!