Thanks to those of you who responded with suggestions. They ranged
from "don't do it at all" to Philip Barnes suggestion of a
milling machine (it must be nice to have all the toys!). Anyway...
The most common suggestion was to use a Dremel tool with a cutting
wheel. Not having a Dremel tool, I immediately used this project
as justification to purchase one. I'm hooked! I've known about
these things forever, but had never seen one in use (much less
used one myself). The high RPMs makes for an extremely delicate
tool, which is really easy to control.
I used the cutting wheel to slice a strip from along all edges
of the "nosepiece" hole and a cutting "burr" to elongate the
knob shaft holes. I then used the second most common suggestion,
and used a file to cleanup the edges of my cuts.
All in all, I did just minor damage, and the new radio fits well.
For what it's worth, I used a small Sony am/fm/cass unit which
left me something over an inch clearance between the back of the
radio and the TR's heater housing.
I did find remains of another DPO in the process. As I opened
the fuse holder in the power line to the original radio, out
popped a blown fuse -- carefully wrapped in aluminum foil! Great.
Anyway, I'm happy with the new radio. I still have to find an
"always hot" wire to properly feed the memory and clock functions
(for now it forgets at each power off). And as in any stereo
upgrade, things now point to the weakest point of the system. My
speakers were much better than the old radio, but marginal for the
new. Hey, it's only money...
Joe Flake
'72 TR-6
flake@a3115jmf.atl.hp.com
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