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NEED "ANY" SERVICE DOCUMENTS FOR Cornell Dubilier MARK 20 BASE

Retro CB Guy

Well-Known Member
Jun 22, 2014
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Hi folks, Does anybody have even the schematics or service manual for the old neat Cornell Dubilier Mark 20 AM base station please, as any help would be greatly appriciated as I don't so a hint on the internet ?

I have the Mark 26 ssb mobile's schematics though, not sure how much help that would be ! ?

Thanks in advance, Retro 73's
 

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CDE is a true "orphan" brand. Their main business was capacitors and antenna rotators. Their foothold and name recognition in the CB market was the reason for entering the radio business. They hired a vendor to apply their name-brand badge to the radios and then got out of the business when the market for 40-channel radios collapsed around 1979 or so.

They never had a service department, never published any service data.

Some of the owner's manuals had a schematic, if memory serves. Can't find any of those in the library here. But that's all you will ever see for a CDE radio is the schematic. Never was any service data published that we ever found out about.

But they really didn't sell a lot of them. Howard Sams publishing had a minimum sales-volume rule you had to meet before they would reverse-engineer the service data for a CB. As I understand it CDE never sold enough units to meet their minimum sales-volume threshold. That's why the names "CDE" or "Cornell-Dubilier" don't appear anywhere in the Howard Sams CB-series index.

At all.

As always, any identifying ID number on the main printed-circuit board is your basic reference point and search term.

The vendor they hired was bound to have sold radios to other importers besides CDE. A radio with the same main circuit board and another brand name on the front is your only hope with an orphan radio.

I don't remember at all who the vendor was, so good luck with catching your wild goose. That's what this radio's technical data is.

73
 
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Thanks Nomad Radio (Chris) and to Yeti I reckon I'll get this as I've found one in great shape and wished I could get a schematics at least but today has turned up a bunch of nothing for me. Interestingly enough though, I own the mobile sideband by CDE the Mark 26 and the users manual which it's got the schematics for that radio... I also have a very similar radio which looks nearly exactly the same cosmeitcally with another brand o it called, " Tenna Power " so it may be same as the CDE other sideband mobile, as they exactly same outwardly with a different color scheme. I'll post pics of the inside later once I have this Orphan Base from CDE, but I've got a good feeling as the gentleman I've been talking with who is selling it is very good with solid communication and he tells me the guy he is selling for everything has turned out exactly as he said it was.

I hope someone wonders in this forum and has a lead I don't know about though, so here's to hoping !!!

73's gentleman thanks for the repsonses thus far, Retro
 
Well the CDE Mark 20 arrived today and will be taking a closer look asap folks. Will post some pics here when I get a chance.

Retro
 
Hmmm. (3) meters and the knobs look a bit like the ones on the Royce 642?

Yes, most companies that didn't design the radio themselves relied on other mainstream manufactures like Cybernet, Uniden, Hitachi, etc to make them.

Get some higher definition photos of the face-plate when you take the ones of the internals.
 
Did anyone ever have any luck locating service info for the Mark 20A? I have one arriving later today sight unseen just pictures I picked up for $100.⁰⁰. Bought it more from a collector standpoint than anything else but would really like to align it if possible.
 
Service material is sparse at best! I'm attaching some pics, one of mine which is about mint condition and the rest was a write up from a past auction where somebody had a clue about more information on this rare base CB...

Maybe this will shed a bit of ligiht who knows, Retro
 

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