Fisher PH-480

The Fisher PH480K is a big 3-piece boombox with some very unique styling. The photograph below shows it on top of a PH-492. Both of them are from 1981, according to their service manuals. I don't know why Fisher decided to introduce both of them in the same year. Maybe one of them was cheaper to manufacture. Anyway, this one has an interesting cosmetic appearance in which all the controls are stacked vertically within a blue stripe. It is powered by two Sanyo LA4126T amplifier chips, providing a combined output of 2 x 11.5 watts at 10% distortion. It has 8-inch woofers (Sanyo part number 4151201280, 4 ohms, 4 watts nominal, 24 watts peak). These woofers have rolled cloth surrounds, which could theoretically allow them to provide more excursion than the 492's paper-edged speakers. It does make very good bass for something from this time period. But there's also a hollow boxy flavor to the sound, due to resonance from the plastic speaker cabinets. If you knock on them, you'll see what I mean. So I went inside and added some strips of Dynamat, and that cleaned up the sound a bit. I also noticed that the woofer screws had loosened up over the years, which happened to my 492 as well. So I tightened them. I also noticed that the yellow foam pad was hanging loose, free to shift around, so I secured it to the rear cover. Replacement antennas can be purchased on Amazon from POBADY, they have one that is almost an exact match. It measures 140mm collapsed, 720mm extended. The tip is just a little bit smaller, but that's the only real difference.