As you can see throughout this blog, I do a lot of repairs of durable goods ranging from cars to electronics. I’m writing a book on closely related topics now (stay tuned here for publication news). One of my contentions is that most repairs are quite easily accomplished with only a small set of tools and rudimentary expertise. In addition, often, the source of the problem can be found by simple visual inspection. Here is one such example.
I had in my electronic “junk pile” an old Hitachi SR-5150 stereo receiver that a neighbour had discarded in the fertile back lanes of Vancouver, BC. The SR-5150 is roughly early 1970’s vintage; it is all solid state and has all discrete transistors (the power transistors are even Hitachi’s own), and an analog FM tuner driven mechanically with pulleys and a flywheel. Nothing high end, maybe 20-30W per channel judging from the power supply. The receiver was dead to the world; it would not show any signs of life when turned on. I was motivated to fix the thing because I was looking for a decent amp to use as part of a new sound system centred on a home computer. (more…)
Randy, you'll need to do further electrical diagnostic steps to locate the problem. One way to proceed is to start…