So here's a funny story about a Fisher 170 receiver...
I bought one of these nice lil' 16 watt flea powered units from CL a few years ago to use around the workbench and as a backup unit for the garage in case the little Realistic STA-47 out there dies. The cap coupled amp section of the baby Fisher sounded very nice driving a small pair of decent speakers plus the tuner section was very sensitive and picked up everything. I liked the little cutie so much that I figured I'd pick up another if I stumbled across one.
Around the springtime of 2016 (and out of boredom mostly) I was looking around for information on the Fisher 170 when I found
this thread on the Philco Phorum posted by a member in Indiana who was having a distortion issue with one. He recapped it, tested everything, changed the rectifier diodes and eventually bypassed the speaker control but the problem persisted. He realized that it wasn't really worth his effort to continue futzing with it so he did the
smart thing and donated it to the "freebie" table at a radio swap meet instead of chucking it or parting it out.
Fast forward to summer 2017, I'm over at a friend and fellow AK'ers house here in central NJ and I spy a Fisher 170 sitting under a bunch of stuff next to his workbench. I asked him about it and he said "I found that on the freebie table as I was leaving a radio swap meet, I don't know if it works but please take it if you want it". I'm thinking to myself "from the freebie table at a radio swap meet, how much you wanna bet this is that same unit from the thread I was reading last year". I get it home and crack 'er open...sure enough it's the one from Indiana!
The previous owner did a
beautiful job of installing the new caps, very neat and professional. Even the temporary bypass on the speaker selector was neat and clean, and that was just for troubleshooting purposes. Anyway, the distortion problem was bad output transistors (when they fail this way they won't show up as bad with a simple meter test, they only fail under a load) so I threw 4 TIP31C's in there, dialed everything in and she was all good.
So now fast forward to this past Thanksgiving up at my sisters place. My niece was admiring the little Pioneer SX-626 that I rebuilt and gave to the family a few years ago as it was playing in the background. She plugged her phone into it for a while and played some really nice music from her playlist while we were all prepping for dinner and doing all the usual holiday stuff. Later on she took me aside and said "you know I
really like that stereo in there, it's so simple to use and it sounds very nice. Do you think there's any way you could set me up with a stereo like that, maybe even a little smaller?" Why yes, I believe I have just the thing...
So the lil' flea powered Fisher has gone from Indiana to PA to NJ and now on to VT where it should run for another 40 years with new caps, diodes, output transistors and all of the 2SC458's replaced. I did the power supply Q's too just for reliability, the new ones are a bit more robust so it's a happy camper now.
BTW if anyone knows Ron Ramirez from the Philco Phorum tell him thanks for doing such neat professional work and thanks for donating the little guy instead of tossing it out in frustration, it'll go on making music for many years to come!