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Kenwood KR-6600 restoration etc.

sean sweeney

AK Subscriber
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I have been working on this Kenwood a lot of this week. A friend sold it to me cheap, as it was stuck in protect mode... I kind of listened in on the amp section and heard that there was a lot of noise from bad transistors, in this case it was the 2sa733's as the differential pairs and others, which i can only assume was a bad batch back then, as generally they have a solid rep as reliable transistors... so I checked my supplies and I had enough KSA922 and KSC1815 to completely restock the amp driver board, and while I was at it, I recapped it and then recapped the power supplies... all of them... and replaced the rectifier, as it seemed like it was a little weak for the system... I noticed that some output transistors had been changed so I replaced the whole lot with the MJ replacement... (the number escapes me) and so now it has all new outputs... and it sounds pretty good... but TWO issues:
1. I can't set the bias... it's not affected by the pot, and the pot is good. I believe I changed he bias transistors.,, the receiver sounds good, clean, clear and powerful, I just can't get the bias to work.
2. The radio sounds distorted, JUST A LITTLE... like it has a subtle harmonic distortion, or compression... some channels aren't that bad, but loud ones sound loud or a little saturated... is there a way to control the gain in the stereo or clean it up? I included a few pics. I forgot to take them during the repair! lol
 

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OK... been listening and it DOES seem to get a little distortion when I crank it higher than 40WPC... standard listening levels, it seems to be ok... but would I still need 40mv of bias with the changes I made, or is it different now? The outputs aren't even warm at the moment... but I definitely hear a little hair on it when I crank it... just trying to make this completely stable, if I can...
 
AND NOW... lol... the tuning meter went out, there's no stereo light and even when there's a full signal on the signal meter, the station won't come through if muting is on... so likely it's the muting circuit. grrr....
 
OK... since no one has piped in... looks like R6 in power supply A is reading almost shorted... so that may be part of the problem, since none of the pins in IC3 have any voltage currently.... someone will probably need this info at some point... lol
 
Thanks, I've read all the previous posts on this subject and tested the pots on this thoroughly... but they're fine. They do exactly what they're supposed to do. This is something else, unfortunately... and now this FM muting problem is messing with me... I have no power going to IC3 and the muting circuit will not disengage... ugh... just trying to sort this out! lol
 
Ill be following this as, i own one of these and i must say, that it's one of my favorite Kenwood's!. :lurk:
 
OK... since no one has piped in... looks like R6 in power supply A is reading almost shorted... so that may be part of the problem, since none of the pins in IC3 have any voltage currently.... someone will probably need this info at some point... lol

Of course you realize that IC3 is the composite AM receiver section, and has no power except in AM mode. S1, Deck 1 takes care of that power switching duty.
 
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