retro radio

anybody ever change out your old amfm radio? have a 7r regal with original stat-icy radio ..looking at these retro radios for GM cars,anyone use one?

A fellow in our Chapter works on all old radios. He has gone through all of my radios now, and except for the 78, Since the 78's is a cassette player, I just use the cassette adaptor for external audio input. All the others have a audio input for anything that has an earphone plug. Even my 56's AM radio. For the 72 I asked for a RCA out so that if I can find the $$$ I can put in a small amp and a subwoofer. So far I am very satisfied with these factory radios. And each fits the dash just the way they should.

There ARE a few things you might want to look at FIRST. One is the antenna lead from the windshield to the back of the radio. Where the connector snaps onto the windshield connection might degrade over time, causing poor reception. Where the antenna lead itself plugs into the back of the radio might also need a little cleaning, too, for good measure. Then, there's always the speakers themselves. Paper in the voice coil cones WILL degrade over time and cause reproduction to be "not what it used to be".

Remember, too, that this was toward the end of the era when GM used "one wire", internally-grounded speakers on many applications. That changed a few years later when they went to the different one-piece speaker/power wiring connector on the back of the radio. All speakers had TWO wires going to them, rather than 2 wires/speaker on the front and one wire/speaker on the rears.

On GM radios of that era, when those cars were new, one of the BEST things to do was to upgrade the speakers to (at that time) some Jensen dual-cone speakers, or even the later GM/Delco dual cone rear speaker kits. MUCH better. Factory speakers were usually rated as "10 ohm" speakers, while some replacements were "8 ohm", but usually "4 ohm" speakers. I believe the lesser resistance of the aftermarket speakers will let the amps produce a little more power, or use more of the power they have in them.

In using some modern speakers, you need to find some which don't take much power to run, as the GM factory radio amps were not that powerful, although they were powerful enough for back then. This means to stay away from speakers which claim to handle "hundreds" of watts of power and have heavy magnets.

In using a replacement two-wire speaker in the place of an internally-grounded factory speaker, all you have to do is to use one of the speaker connections and run a wire "to ground" and everything will work fine.

Also, on the rear speakers, you'll need to "lose" the factory isolation "baskets" which attach to those speakers. This will effectively increase the "baffle volume" on the backside of the speaker, using the whole luggage compartment as that "baffle" instead.

Some 3.5" speakers in the front (possibly "factory replacement" if you can find them) and some 6x9" dual cones or coaxes in the back and you'll be surprised how good that factory radio might sound, by observation. While not quite as nice as the newer-electronics RetroSound radios, but also not $600 dollars (for the radio only) either.

Also, that "back brace" for the radio not only keeps the radio stable in the instrument panel, it ALSO serves as the radio's "case ground" . . . which HAS to be there, too.

Just some thoughts,

NTX5467

Just replace all the paper wound capacitors with modern plastic ones and, like NTX recommends, replace the speakers. You should be pretty happy.

Bernie

Thanks for that additional comment, Bernie. Just as with other parts of a vehicle, anything with "paper, grease, wax" in it will deteriorate with time, age, and hot/cold cycles as those components all "dry out" somewhat.

Enjoy!

NTX5467

did you try to tune the antenna with the little screw behind the tunner knob? just a thought

As I understand it, the "antenna trimmer" (i.e., tune for the loudest static at a certain frequency) is only operation on the AM band.

Back then, there were some OEM GM/Delco radios which had tags on their case tops "For Windshield Antenna" or "For Power Antenna", as if the electronics were "tuned" for that sort of antenna input. I never did find out just what changed, but apparently it was more than just a sticker/label. A few years later, the labels were not used. As I recall, though, there was not any real difference in the reception quality between the windshield antenna and an external fixed mast or power antenna, except possibly in a very "fringe reception area", by observation.

Just some thoughts . . .

NTX5467