Finished a side project 12 years in the making! I converted a true “Porta-Fi” system.
We bought this stereo in 2013 and I found a weird box inside it that didn’t seem to do anything. A vintage electronic show happened to be going on that weekend, so we took the box to the show where I asked every vendor “What is this?”
Only one vendor knew what it was and exclaimed “Ohhh…that’s a Porta-fi! I haven’t seen one in years.” It turns out that GE made “wireless” speakers for their stereos so you could put remote speakers throughout the house. However, the speakers weren’t wireless. They had a power cord, and if you plugged the speaker into the same voltage leg of the stereo, my little box would transmit the music through the house wiring to the speaker.
I sat down on a bench at the show and bought three Porta-Fi speakers on ebay while Lina went record shopping. We were super excited when they arrived. We really excited when I turned them on and it worked…for about 10 seconds before they died one by one.
A local vintage electronics expert couldn’t get them to work, so I sold two and kept one to turn into a portable speaker. It worked well with a little Bluetooth amplifier I bought, but the amplifier went missing years ago.
The stereo and my sonos system started to die last year and a friend convinced us to rip out it’s guts and replace it with new equipment. Another guy in Denver happened to be restoring the exact same unit and was happy to get the record player and guts, so I gave him all of the Porta-Fi electronics as well…but I kept the speaker.
I replaced the sonos system with an Arylic system to play the same music to every speaker in the house, partially because they have DIY amplifiers that you can use to create custom speaker boxes.
So I got a Mono DIY card and found a battery/power supply to power it. I managed to use the original power/volume knob and get the new card LED behind the original light indication.
Now we have a true Porta Fi System that can link to the audio in the house or play music on it’s own…no external wires required unles syou want to charge the batteries.
I’m hoping Lina can walnut-grain it up and find a good handle and feet.
You must be logged in to post a comment.