I picked up an SX-3900 on the big auction site that looked cosmetically decent but would not power on. I thought, how hard could it be to get it working? Plenty as it turns out.
Upon opening it up I discovered that someone had been in it before. I am not talking about a basic repair, you know a couple transistors cap or bulbs... No sir.
Cut wires, substituted sections, hot glue holding things together and literally used in place of solder.
A couple of examples:
The multi voltage selector has all the wires cut. And after examination there is no multi voltage tranny to connect them to. The back plate of the receiver shows it to be a multi voltage model but the transformer and rectifier are not. So are the part inside original or not? Is the back original?
This is a great shot.
Look carefully at the wires from the preamp to the amp. What you see is hot glue holding the wires on. Check out the lamps, lots of liberal use of the glue. The lamp for the quartz lock is soldered on with no shrink tube and the bulb is crammed under the plastic and broken. The am antenna is cut and manny of the wires to the back panel are lobbed off.
The amp section is a mess...
This is just what I can see so far.
Should I send it back?