I had been thinking about this for a while, the fisher price record players sound good for what they are and they have a very light
tone arm for a kiddie player.
So i though as they are mono would it be possible to connect an external phono lead to the pickup so you could plug it into a tube amp.
Answer is YES, i opened one of mine up and looked to see where the wires for the tone arm connected to the little internal amp.
I simply soldred a home made phono lead to these connections and neatly fed it out of the side, for now it is coming out of the transformer jackhole as this deck runs off 4 Dcell batteries.
My intention is to drill a small hole and put a gromet in and make it look neat, so i can use the external power pack too.
I have been testing it with my 6V6 amp and for all its cheap the turntable does a very good job.
Best thing is the internal amp still works driving the little internal speaker.
It can all be changed back too.
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They are toys. Stay away from them.

Thats your opinion and your welcome to it.

Very interesting, I'm sure, but the pink Fisher-Price machines date to about the same time period as the Crosley reproduction radios, 1991-1993.

Antique? Vintage?

Really?

Yes, I realise that it is not true that "art stopped short in the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine..." but 1991-1993?


I feel very, very old.




Now get off of my lawn!

Actually they dont , the last Fisher price record player was made in 1983 and they are far superior to any of that Croskley garbage.
I actually collect the fisher price players so i will pick up any i see, i am on the lookout for their biggest machine it had twin removal speakers was made in the early seventies.

Toys are for having fun with. Have at it and enjoy.

RJ

No. You are mistaken.

I purchased a new red-and-white Fisher-Price battery/ac portable for my nephew's sixth birthday. The boy was born on July 26th, 1985. The phonograph was purchased at our then spanking-new Wal-Mart.

Some information about these players is available here:

http://www.thisoldtoy.com/fisher-price/ ... ayers.html

The above firm offers replacement parts for many of these toys.

The stereo phonograph that you mention is listed in the 1989 Sears Wish-Book, but is not listed in 1979 (I only keep decade examples of these late catalogs.)

they do not cover the very late machines, which were sold as late as 1994, nor do they cover other interesting toys such as the Fisher-Price video recorder, which recorded about three minutes of video on a C-90 cassette which was run through at a very high speed.

Fun mod there...those battery op Fisher Price players are hard to come by. They are VERY popular with the Record Collector Crowd. They use these as mobile players to test records out at shows etc.

I absolutely love the Fisher price Players, in fact I love any form of record player or machine that has been cobbled together to make music. Some of my favorite machines are the little one tube RCA licensed 45 players, the designs of the cases for these things are just wonderful.

I have to say though I am very amazed that the majority of these Fisher Price Players still work all these years later, ever take one apart? WOW...they are literally ALL plastic down to the entire idler mechanism including the shaft and idler wheel itself! They must have made these things from some kind of super plastic as kids beat this stuff and I have yet to find a broken one. They definitely are not built for quality sound reproduction and usually have pretty severe wow and flutter but that is the nature of the beast with these. They were built to serve a purpose as a cheap kid's toy to just play records and they do.

Someone should post some pics of the insides of a FP, it is pretty amusing! All that plastic and about the smallest amp of any record player...I think one LM386 chip, and couple tiny caps and resistors is all it is. What fun!

here we go.
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Not much in there at all, amazing machines for what they are.

I have never seen the battery op one inside. Actually the amp-power board in your battery op is about triple the size of the one in the 120V unit!

I don't see the big plastic idler assembly that the 120V unit has either. I am guessing in the battery op unit the motor speed control is electronic and that is why there is all the extra electronics and lack of the huge plastic idler assembly like the 120V units have. The design of the battery op FP is indeed much like the crosley units in those aspects then.

T

The RCA "Skipper" of the 1950's wasn't built much better, horribly cheap motor, plastic everything.

True, true....actually the one tube units where probably built with what was the `50s equivalent of the materials used in the `80s FP players.

I have the mains version too, i need the special driver for those slot screws, the battery one just uses normal crosshead screws.
Now ive added the line out its perfect as a test player especially for a tube amp with a tape input.

LOL...I was gonna ask what you did about those. The special tool (a tri-star I recall) is like $20, I made one out of an Allen wrench that was close in size and ground down the end to work. It was a bit of a stinker to do but it works. I only paid $5 for my 120V FP I was damned if I was going to pay $20 for a tool just to take it apart.

They maybe cheap plastic but, battery one is 30 years old and my mains one is 33 years old, Fisher Price did something right, they both play great and the motors keep their speed.
If i remember they both cost me $5 each and it was the wife who spotted them hiding away.

Pink plastic makes me smile
There's an art to making inexpensive functional works like these. Fisher Price the prince of plastic!

Don't think I'm criticizing you for collecting them, certainly not, I can totally understand the fascination with them.
Brightly colored bits of plastic are attractive to me also, that's why I collect those horrible little 5" Chinese Dollar Store TV's.