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Looking for help in how to disassemble the reproducer from a Brunswick Panatrope portable. It runs just fine and plays, but the sound quality is not that great. I was thinking that maybe the reproducer could use a good cleaning (?). My usual "go to" is to get a bigger hammer, but am thinking that may not the best route to go with this

Take a couple headless nails & drive them into a piece of wood, far enough in so they don't bend...

Or you could send it to Wyatt Markus, who rebuilds phonograph reproducers very well. He is on the Forum here as MicaMonster. I'm sure he can explain what's exactly in a Panatrope. It's not a cleaning it likely needs at this point, but spare parts. Fresh gaskets & all that, plus alignment, help these later reproducers work their best.

Congratulations on having a Panatrope portable. They have good sound with both the acoustic records and the electric ones.

Just an observation: I have not serviced one of these reproducers before, but it looks like the ring on the back side of the reproducer can be unscrewed using the two small slots on each side. You can make a "wrench" to remove it by measuring the distance between the two slots. Then using a small piece of wood, measure the distance and drive two small nails that will fit into the slots at the appropriate places on the wood piece... Take the wood piece with the nails inserted into the slots on the reproducer and turn it like a wrench, counter-clockwise. Hopefully, this is the answer to disassembling it.

I sent mine to Steven Medved when the cat broke mine,

Honestly, those reproducers almost never need attention, unless they're damaged or made of crumbled pot metal. Yours does not have the appearance of either. These are a bit more involved than rebuilding a Victor Exhibition. I would really suggest sending it to Wyatt Marcus, as also suggested above.

Thank you to everyone for the suggestions and discussion.

I did some clean-up inside the rest of the machine (including dumping about half a dozen old needles out of the horn) and did some of the things mentioned in another thread here about improving sound quality, and all of that has helped tremendously. I may just leave the reproducer "as is" for now.
Thanks again!

Hi Frisco, here is a link to a post by larryh regarding the Panatrope soundbox: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16118&p=93519&hilit ... nts#p93519 He mentions lightly oiling pivot points, which I did on my Panatrope portable, and it did seem to be effective. Good luck with your machine.