the death of a fisher 440-t, 18 of 50 batch 1

stereorob

Super Member
today i grabbed my fisher 440t off the dusty crapstack of my old garage receiver stash. i guess the 10 years of humid storage killed this one. i plugged it in threw the switch and i immediatly heard a loud buzzing sound from the power xformer. :( cry........
i dont have many of these early s.s. fishers and this one is in really good shape and the last time i powerd it up it worked fine. is there ANY hope for my poor 440t???????? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
im a collector not a repair man. but im willing to learn if its a easy fix!!!!!!:sigh:
 

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Maybe if the fuse blew before too much damage occurred. Could easily have been dead PS filter caps shorting out. You will need to do some sleuthing to find out for sure just what took a powder and what it took with it.

mike
 
You are flirting with disaster by just plugging these units in.

Build a Dim Bulb Tester and use it when powering these up.

All it really is is a light bulb in series with the AC power cord.

It will not fix a bad unit but it will save it from more damage.

You can thank me later.
 
today i grabbed my fisher 440t off the dusty crapstack of my old garage receiver stash. i guess the 10 years of humid storage killed this one. i plugged it in threw the switch and i immediatly heard a loud buzzing sound from the power xformer. :( cry........
i dont have many of these early s.s. fishers and this one is in really good shape and the last time i powerd it up it worked fine. is there ANY hope for my poor 440t???????? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
im a collector not a repair man. but im willing to learn if its a easy fix!!!!!!:sigh:

You really can't bring up a 440T very well on a variac.

If you haven't recapped it, that's what it probably needs. You are likely hearing a short in progress. Once a short develops, forget about the variac anyway. It needs repair now. Don't run it any more until it's fixed.

Recapping these Gen I SS Fishers is a lot of work. It used to be a labor of love, as they had little market value to justify the expense. I don't know if that's the case anymore.

The important thing to avoid is burning up the germanium outputs or a transformer winding. The germanium outputs can be very expensive, and Fisher used really nice sounding RCAs on a lot of the early ones. Other than that, they are pretty hardy in that whatever else breaks can usually be fixed.

If it's beyond what you want to do with it, don't toss it. I can probably find it a good home if you want to donate it.
 
I've recapped a 175-T and a 500-TX, and didn't find them anymore difficult than a 780-880 series PIONEER. I didn't touch the tuner boards tho. Both work well except for the tuner on the 175 needs a osc coil. Unobtanium. The 500TX is doing daily or should I say nightly duty in the bedroom.

Larry
 
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