Fisher 110-S

A turntable, a walnut base, a magnetic cartridge — and the odd pitch that the base itself was the neglected component worth improving.

Overview

The Fisher 110-S is a curious thing to find in the company's catalog: not a receiver, not a tuner, but essentially a turntable fitted with a magnetic cartridge and mounted in a walnut base. Fisher's own advertising for the model made the case directly, arguing that the turntable base was the component other manufacturers had neglected, and presenting the 110-S as the correction (HiFI-Stereo, March 1968, p.27). Whether that framing sold many units is not recorded, but it tells you exactly what the product was meant to be — a finished, factory-mounted record-playing foundation rather than a bare deck.

The advertising also ties the 110-S to a sibling product. The Fisher 110 is described in the same campaign as a 35-watt AM-FM stereo receiver with a built-in automatic turntable, sold without speakers at $379.95. The 110-S, by the same account, is the turntable-with-cartridge-and-walnut-base piece of that picture. Collectors should read that relationship carefully: the period copy presents the 110-S as a distinct item, but the "S" designation and the shared model number suggest it belongs to the same system concept. The documentation available here does not spell out whether the 110-S was sold separately, bundled with the 110, or both.

That is roughly where the solid record ends. No production years, no original price for the 110-S itself, no dimensions, no weight, no speed or wow-and-flutter figures, and no cartridge specification have surfaced in the available material. The cabinet material is confirmed as walnut by the period advertising, and the presence of a magnetic cartridge is confirmed the same way. Beyond that, the model is largely undocumented in the sources at hand.

What the 110-S does have going for it is a clear place in Fisher's late-1960s compact-system push. The company's advertising from the period leans hard on the idea that high fidelity had come a long way from its bulky beginnings, and that Fisher — which the copy credits with inventing the FM-stereo receiver — was competing to perfect the compact hi-fi system. The 110-S reads as a piece of that effort: an attempt to sell the whole record-playing chain as a matched, finished object rather than a stack of separately chosen parts.

For anyone hunting one today, the practical cautions are the usual ones for a turntable of this vintage, and the archive has no model-specific failure data to offer. The magnetic cartridge is the first thing to check, since original cartridges of the era are frequently worn, missing their stylus, or replaced with something unknown. The automatic mechanism, if the 110-S shares the automatic operation described for the 110, is the second thing to exercise before trusting it with a record. The walnut base is the third — it is the feature Fisher chose to advertise, so a specimen with an intact, unrefinished base is the one worth having.

Values are not documented here. Listings for Fisher turntables and compact systems of this period turn up from time to time, but without a reliable record of original price or current sales the archive will not put a number on the 110-S. Buyers should treat any asking price as an opening position and inspect the cartridge and automatic mechanism closely.

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