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  1. Hak Foo

    KR-4070 possible trace damage

    There was definitely some removal of the white trace/coating material on the glue: I threw a little bit of model-aircraft white paint to try to replace that chunk of material. With some of the other "painted traces" around the "printed resistors", you can see there's a clear ridge underneath...
  2. Hak Foo

    KR-4070 possible trace damage

    I should have assumed this would happen. The first thing I noticed about this KR-4070 was a dead AM/FM section, due to a crack in one of the top-surface PCB traces. These are clearly a hacked-together design and make the stuff I order for pennies from JLCPCB look like some sort of artisan...
  3. Hak Foo

    Sony TC-KA1ESA: loose door/tape carrier causing failures

    Followup for future people: The part of the mechanism that the hook attaches to can be flexed slightly-- bending it back a few degrees got the door more correctly aligned and able to play without angry mechanism noises. I suspect the device took a fall at some point-- this might explain the...
  4. Hak Foo

    Sony TC-KA1ESA: loose door/tape carrier causing failures

    After successfully doing a belt job on a RX79ES, I saw a KA1ESA at the local junk shop and said "Well, I wanted three heads and Dolby S". Apparently this is a "box-ticker" product-- looks great on a spec card, but nobody seems to like the mechanism on it and it's apparently prone to...
  5. Hak Foo

    Advent 1002/Baby as base for Frankenspeakers

    I ended up doing it the literal cheapest way, as a learning experience. I figure I can always revisit it with better parts at some point in the future. I went with the $7.50 woofers (https://www.parts-express.com/6-1-2-Poly-Cone-Woofer-4-Ohm-299-609?quantity=1) and the $6-per-pair tweeeters...
  6. Hak Foo

    Advent 1002/Baby as base for Frankenspeakers

    So I blew 18 bucks on a pair of small Advent speakers at the thrift shop today. My main speakers are Pioneer FS52s, which are competent enough but I think one has a fault (it occasionally goes silent until tipped or poked the right way), so that's an excuse to get more audio gear. :) I didn't...
  7. Hak Foo

    Goodwill/SA/Thrift Store Discussions & Finds

    There was (as of a few hours ago) an Onkyo A-5 at the Goodwill at Stapley and Southern in Mesa, AZ. Marked $50, which was a bit more than I wanted to spend but I'm sure someone else would be interested. Noticed they've started claiming "ask for knobs at counter".
  8. Hak Foo

    KR-4070, possible break in tuner power trace

    Just following up on this: A bodge wire between the orange wire and the lead on R88 brought the tuner back to life. Installed a triac since there looked to be a bit of flicker that was concerning and I had one handy. Deoxited all the controls. Went through a bajillion cotton swaps mucking...
  9. Hak Foo

    KR-4070, possible break in tuner power trace

    For my last thrift-shop trip of the year, I ended up ripping a KR-4070 off of the stocking cart for 17.50. Bonus: they actually started setting aside the knobs so they weren't all pilfered. The main cosmetic issue appears to be that the the clip that holds the antenna was broken and missing...
  10. Hak Foo

    Sansui XR-Q9 Turntable Restoration

    I'm trying to get a FR-Q5 running, which uses a similar mechanism. Getting no tonearm motion, possibly related to the solenoid (16 in the exploded view) not engaging. I'm working on the premise that it's confused by the state of the sense switches, so it doesn't do things like "activate the...
  11. Hak Foo

    FR-Q5: blown fuse, what am I getting into?

    Okay, next challenge. I was able to get the appropriate fuse, and an O-ring roughly the right size. It seems to require a manual nudge to start turning sometimes, but it's definitely actually getting power to the worm now. The problem is that the arm still doesn't swing while the motor turns...
  12. Hak Foo

    FR-Q5: blown fuse, what am I getting into?

    Followup: being unable to wait, I threw in a higher-rated fuse (4A/250V) to see what happened. It appears to respond to lights now and the motor spins up. The motor spins up as soon as power goes on; this seems different from the Onkyo, which awaits the "play" button press to do this--...
  13. Hak Foo

    FR-Q5: blown fuse, what am I getting into?

    I was out of town today and stopped in a thrift shop. Found a Sansui FR-Q5, which didn't power up. No lamps or motion. It was 15 bucks, and the plastic lid looked in okay shape, so I figured I could bring it home for a project for some upcoming time off work. Figured I could race it against...
  14. Hak Foo

    JVC KD-D40 "Record" stuck on

    So I have a KD-D40 that I bought a few years ago. It was always a touch balky, but I was usually just using it enough to test I had it wired correctly. Recently, it got into a state where when you press "play", the "record" light comes on too. The button won't lock down the way "Play" or...
  15. Hak Foo

    Non repairable Mitsubishi DA-A10

    General thought: A lot of older audio PCBs are, by modern standards, pretty simple: only one layer, big through hole components, sometimes even a corresponding diagram silkscreened on the back. I wonder if it would be feasible to desolder a damaged/dead PCB, scan it at high resolution, clean...
  16. Hak Foo

    Craziest Thing You’ve Found in a Stereo Console

    Many years ago, I gutted an old IBM terminal controller (a big plastic-and-metal floorstanding unit about 75x40x75cm) and used it as a stereo cabinet. My Honduran Milksnake decided it was a good place to lodge himself. Had to pull the whole thing apart to get him out.
  17. Hak Foo

    Back in the day kids playing parents' stereos

    My parents had a HK 330c, a Kenwood tape deck, and a BIC changer. I can recall: * We fed the tape deck a sandwich and it was bound up; sometime in the early 2000s we found it had worked free, and was used by my brother for a few years; I assume belts gave way. He now plays cassettes on...
  18. Hak Foo

    What is the sweet spot for WPC?

    I'd make a case less about audio performance and more about design. For a conventional solid-state Class AB design, the 50-70 watt range is a good spot because it allows for good design decisions. * It's often high enough in the product stack that you're getting most of the mainstream...
  19. Hak Foo

    Why can't they start again?

    What surprises me is how little out-of-the-box thinking there is. You've got a lot of manufacturers trying, implicitly or explicitly, to build or rebadge a SL-1200 clone. You've got the low-end firms taking the same crappy mechanisms and putting it in different cute boxes. Then you've got the...
  20. Hak Foo

    Low-end of high-end vs. high-end of low-end

    I'd think one thing that the high-end-of-low-end brands had going for them is that they can test the cost of compromises in their mainstream line. A hypothetical: say they're considering using a contract manufacturer (or a different part supplier, or a weird amp topology) to save a few...
  21. Hak Foo

    JVC R-X400 Receiver

    0 db might be the tuner signal strength. Do you have a FM antenna connected? The meter will probably be zero until you get a decent signal. If the lack of sound continues outside FM (i. e. feeding in your favourite known good source via aux) then we need to start moving deeper into diagnosis...
  22. Hak Foo

    What I learned on Craigslist

    Y'know, for *that cheap*, I could probably find a use for it. Drive it from a PC with a customized video mode to be, say, 1920x960 letterboxed to hide the dead spot. Use it for signage or a digital photo frame where the edges of the panel are covered with a trim piece. I once bought a LCD...
  23. Hak Foo

    JVC R-S77 STEREO RECEIVER

    JVC used 8700/56 on a fair number of units at around that era. I replaced them in an A-X4 with 10000uF/63v. Going up in voltage usually hurts nothing. There may be slightly more strain on the power supply by raising the capacitance, but remember that a lot of these caps are specified +/-20%--...
  24. Hak Foo

    Capacitor replacement kits. Ever seen this site before?

    TBH, I looked at getting one of their kits for my A-X4, but decided to build my own instead. TBH, the presence of the kit was a big part of the reason I chose the A-X4 over some of the other models I had been considering (The A-X40 with a more interesting looking display, or that 110wpc MCS...
  25. Hak Foo

    Photos - Let's see your 1st stereo systems.

    I used computer speakers for a long time... eventually got an adapter to swap in a thrift-store tuner as an alternative (a JVC T-X30, my first piece of vintage kit). At the end of university, I bought a Pioneer VSX-305 (circa 1996) from another kid breaking up his dorm, but didn't replace the...
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