Alignment Procedure Time Requirements.

[BobHelms]

Pioneer TX-9100 Tuner. How much time is normally required to align AM and FM sections. Consider that there are no other issues except that it needs an alignment. Is it an all day affair or can it be completed in an hour or so? TIA for any information provided.
Bob Helms

 

[chazix]

The TX-9100 is pretty straightforward, and I'm reasonably experienced with alignments, but I don't think I would bet on myself being able to do a quality job in less than two hours. For the RF stages of both AM and FM, one needs to iterate over the steps a few times, because the adjustments interact to some extent.

No doubt you're aware of this, but it's a quite a postulation that a 40-year-old tuner would need nothing other than an alignment.

cheers,

chazix

 

[ConradH]

Chazix be better than me. Being a higher end tuner, it has more than the usual number of adjustments, though not by much. At least it uses ceramic filters, so there's no IF chain to adjust. I'm guessing it would take me half a day if all went smoothly. More likely, some anomaly occurs, something doesn't adjust the way it should or there's some noisy transistor, bad pot, out of spec resistor, bad solder joint or whatever. Suddenly a straightforward job ends up taking the entire day.

 

[chazix]

chazix be guilty of hubris, more likely.

 

[ConradH]

Doubt it. The thing I always forget is the time required to clean off the bench, interconnecting everything, printing out a copy of the necessary manual pages and often converting the manual instructions into something easier to follow. The people who specialize in something like McIntosh or Marantz, and see the same models more than once, are probably way more efficient.

 

[transmaster]

I have been told by more then one person to go through everything else and the last thing is the alignment.