Sansui RZ-5500AV Blank Display

[VintageNJ]

Hi everyone!

I picked up a cool vintage Sansui RZ-5500AV receiver at a flea market.

Got home, plugged it in, and it worked perfectly.

Then I plugged in the Sansui cassette deck I purchased with it, using a switched electrical outlet on the back of the receiver.

Not sure if that caused it, but afterwards the display on the receiver stopped working.

I have attached some photos of the unit, which is extremely heavy!

Does anyone have any ideas about how I might fix the display on this?\

Thank you in advance,

Brian

 

[Sansuiman]

Doss the receiver power up at all now (makes sound, just no display) or is it completely dead? If the latter, I suspect there was wrong with the cassette deck that overloaded the switched outlet on the receiver and - best case here - blew a fuse inside the receiver. In that case, it is probably the main fuse that blew and should be easy enough to identify and replace.

If the unit is still making sound, and just has no display, the issue will be more involved, I'm afraid. This is a vacuum fluorescent display powered by high voltage generated within the unit's internal power supply. If that portion of the power supply has failed, it will need rebuilding. If the display has failed (unlikely just from attaching the cassette deck, admittedly) then you have big problems as these displays are custom made for the purpose and the only parts source would be from a donor unit.

 

[VintageNJ]

Thank you for the thoughts.

We messed around with it for a while, and actually the screen came on!

It appears to work fine now. Not sure what the problem was. We just switched the sourced and cycled the power a bunch.

It sounds ok.

I realize that this was not a super high-end component, but does anyone know anything about this?

Is it a decent amp / receiver?

Brian

 

[Sansuiman]

Ok. Sounds like a loose connection internally. There is probably a wiring harness (possibly a ribbon cable in this case) that connects the display circuit board to the main board. Check to make sure that is securely connected at both ends. There may be more than one cable involved as well, so check any connections between the two boards.

I'd say this is an average to slightly better than average A/V receiver for the era it was made in. Not spectacular, but not junk either. Sansui was pinched pretty badly financially in the time frame this series was made,. Whiile they were still making high end integrated amps for the Japanese market, most of their other product lines had settled into what I'd call mid-fi, of fairly decent build quality (relative to what was generally available at the time) but nothing like the exceptional gear they made until about 1981.

There's a good chance this model was sourced from another manufacturer and rebadged by Sansui, or that it was a semi-customized contract manufacturing job based on their supplied specs. This was a more common approach as the company shrank in from it's peak success in the mid to late 70's.

 

[Hyperion]

I'd say this is an average to slightly better than average A/V receiver for the era it was made in. Not spectacular, but not junk either.

That^^^ was pretty much my views on the unit.