Uploaded September 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This "refurbished" stereo receiver was plagued by quite a few gremlins when I initially received it, all of which were thankfully fixable.
The first of which, and one that led me to believe the entire receiver was a write-off, was that of flickering dial lamps and "sizzling" sounds coming from inside the unit. Additionally, both FM stereo and FM muting were not working. It turned out that dirty and worn out contacts in the combination power/speaker switch were causing electricity to arc (inside the switch), leading to the erratic and sometime inexplicable behavior, e.g., flickering lights; distorted, static-filled audio; and a faint"sizzling" electrical sound emanating from its internals.
The FM muting and FM stereo fiasco was solely caused by an improperly adjusted variable resistor; whoever refurbished the unit must have gotten a bit too aggressive with their "calibration" as they turned it up to its maximum setting. This, in turn, caused the receiver to believe that every signal it was receiving was a weak one, and as a direct result, disallow FM stereo to be picked up.
After fixing these problems, it's back in pristine, functional condition and sounds excellent for a 21 watt per channel system!
This "refurbished" stereo receiver was plagued by quite a few gremlins when I initially received it, all of which were thankfully fixable.
The first of which, and one that led me to believe the entire receiver was a write-off, was that of flickering dial lamps and "sizzling" sounds coming from inside the unit. Additionally, both FM stereo and FM muting were not working. It turned out that dirty and worn out contacts in the combination power/speaker switch were causing electricity to arc (inside the switch), leading to the erratic and sometime inexplicable behavior, e.g., flickering lights; distorted, static-filled audio; and a faint"sizzling" electrical sound emanating from its internals.
The FM muting and FM stereo fiasco was solely caused by an improperly adjusted variable resistor; whoever refurbished the unit must have gotten a bit too aggressive with their "calibration" as they turned it up to its maximum setting. This, in turn, caused the receiver to believe that every signal it was receiving was a weak one, and as a direct result, disallow FM stereo to be picked up.
After fixing these problems, it's back in pristine, functional condition and sounds excellent for a 21 watt per channel system!
