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Removing tobacco smoke residue

H

HPMguy

Super Member
Any hints for getting decades of nicotine and tar off a silver face receiver? I got a KR-645G today that is a real mess cosmetically.

Reeks of stale cigar and cigarette smoke, and is bronze in color (standard aluminum under the goo).

I've tried Murphy's Oil Soap (undiluted) and 91% isopropanol, and with great care glass cleaner -- I'm concerned about stripping the painted labels off. It comes off by not cleanly or fast. Going to take a long, long time!

I may try some sudsy ammonia -- with care, again I don't want to strip the painted markings -- and maybe some paint thinner.

This stuff is awful. PO must has sat directly in front of it chain smoking for a couple decades.

I expect it will stink when powered up to....

Thanks!
 
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These are the before and after photos of my Sony STR-6200F. It was absolutely disgusting as you can tell from the photos. I used Simple Green to clean it. I took it all apart and soaked the knobs in it. I was warned after the fact that Simple Green has the potential to take the lettering off but luckily I didn't have that problem. Good luck cleaning yours!
LS6AG21.jpeg
 
Lol, must have been the same guy, that's almost exactly what mine looks like!

I will get some Simple Green tomorrow.

Gross stuff, can you imagine what the smoker's lungs look like?

Operationally the receiver appears to be OK, although I'll replace caps and go through it to check.
 
esteboune said:
What was the impact on the internal components?
Click to expand...

Inside seemed to be ok. I replaced some noisy transistors on the phono board but besides that I’ve had no problems with it. The wooden case was just as bad as the front of it, smelled terrible!
 
Very hot water and a mild surfactant has worked well for me to remove tobacco tar from many surfaces. The hot water is needed to soften the tar and break the bond, and once broken the surfactant keeps it in suspension to rinse away. It can also be accomplished with some chemicals, but the solvents necessary to soften the tar can also damage other materials.
 
Cleaned up pretty well with Simple Green. Unfortunately, the "lemon" scented, which has no lemon smell at all but does indeed reek of cheap perfume. May use the rest of it to keep rabbits out of the garden this spring.....

Looks pretty good now. Will have to check DC offset before I attempt speakers, it's drawing more current than I like on my dim bulb tester.
 
I will see if I can lift the pic from the eBay listing, didn't take one as I didn't want to wait to clean it up. Somewhat worse than the Sony above, big finger marks on all the switches and knobs. Really gross.

I'll post after pics when I've done another round of cleaning, it's better but not completely done yet. Have to wipe with the finish texture to get it all off.
 
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