rocketraider

Anyone remember speaker wiring colors for 70s-mid-80s Craig car stereos? This is a shaft mount T633 AM-FM-cassette and has WHITE, BROWN, GRAY and GREEN speaker leads plus BLACK speaker common ground. It's not a PowerPlay unit.

Guess I've got spoiled to later standardized color-coding. This thing is from a time when every manufacturer had their own wiring colors.

If it works we're probably gonna put it in buddy's 77 LeSabre Estate Wagon as its Delco AM-FM-CB works when it wants, which is not often. Then we'll have to find a 70s GM adapter plug- they used to be easy to find too.

Y'all would think as many of these things as I installed back in the day I'd remember but I don't and googling hasn't turned up anything.

RonFX

Hey:
I was the coolest guy in the neighborhood when I got my New Craig unit back in the 70's, that was a few brain cells ago. Maybe the easiest thing to do is connect some speakers breadboard style and play w/ the left-right / front-rear control ***** and just figure it out that way since they have common ground wire. When I started the restoration on my 66 Cutlass a couple years ago, it still had the Craig Stereo in the dash after nearly 30 years in the garage.
Thanks, Ron

oldcutlass

This might help:

Lady72nRob71

If your friend decides to part with the factory system, I might be interested in it for spare parts if the price is right and it is the right series (ETR). I have a system here with a bad CB section that I need to repair.

cjsdad

Green = Left Front positive
White = Right front positive
Brown = Left Rear positive
Grey = Right Rear positive
Black = Common Ground

This actually was the standardized color coding for stereos. Mainstream stereos anyway. Craig had a few good years in the mid '80s but they never made it to the high-end market. I must have wired up thousands of stereos over my 15 year career as an installer.

rocketraider

cjsdad- Thanks! I was thinking gray/white were right channel but I couldn't remember, and didn't want to fry the thing.

Rob- this one is an analog AM-FM tuner and digital CB tuner like this one from a 77 Bonneville.

cb-1.jpg

He's mentioned getting it repaired so he'll probably keep it. I'll let him know you're interested though.

I've had all grades of car stereos over the years, from Sparkomatic and Tenna all the way up to Blaupunkt and Alpine. Yeah, the high end stuff sounded the best, but the Blaupunkt in particular seemed to spend more time out of the car than it did in it. Add in Bosch arrogance about getting it repaired and let's say I was less than happy with it.

cjsdad

That is why we used to call those things BlowChunks!

rocketraider

I bought a bunch of shaft-mount cassette units at auction a few weeks back. The Craig was in that lot and buddy likes it because it appears era-correct for his Buick wagon, pushbutton tuning and all. There were even a few NOS units in the lot- a couple of Radio Shack Optimus, a JVC (probably going in my Gray Ghost wagon) and a DIN Kenwood. Since shaft-mount units are no longer made and not easy to find good ones, I reasoned you can never have too many spare ones lying around. Plus they were cheap...

There was a Blaupunkt Sacramento in the auction lot with a "service history" starting from its 1987 purchase. Let's just say that one is typical of my own Blaupunkt experience. There were 5 repair orders in the box with it including one from 1991 at a Blaupunkt factory service center that stated "parts no longer available". All five indicated weak output on one or both channels. Its last repair order was from 1997. But, amazingly, all its wiring including the weird Blaupunkt speaker connectors was intact.

My BP Boston had audio cutout problems on the tape deck that a local shop finally repaired successfully, after I had argued with and ultimately cussed out the American Bosch warranty people.

Lady72nRob71

Glad to hear he is getting it repaired as they are hard to find and perform reasonably when working right. I have two digital systems and one had a slew of bad solder joints - common problem (aside from mechanical issues with tape drives).
Does this one have the external unit for the CB? The digital ones do for sure and one of mine is bad. I have the schematics but no parts.

I agree on Blaupunkt inverse-quality. The Delco ETR2000 series used a Blaupunkt tape deck in its high-end units. They are problem children for sure. The reel sensors (LED/photocell) die prematurely regardless of amount of use. I even had a dead one in a NOS radio! The motors are hard to adjust and the release mechs are quite sensitive. Wow and flutter was always on the high side. The tiny hex bolts are a pain, too.
These gave me a sour taste for German electrical stuff. It repeated on ignition coils on late 90's-early 00's Lawn Boy mowers. They die every 5 years. "Made in Germany" printed right on them... Never replaced an ignition coil on any mower until then and I have worked on them for 25 years...