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Servicing older / vintage kit?

M

Michael L

pfm Member
Having been given the Sony tune bug by Tony a couple of years ago I've enedd up with an ST-A7B tuner, which is juuuuust amazing. I'd like to get it serviced; anybody know anyone hat can service that kind of kit?

TIA

M
 
An expert on superhetrodyne tuners could at the very least check it is running in tollerance and adjust it if it were not. The question is how many said experts are still are around. They guy I knew of died a couple of years ago (prematurely).
 
Some of us with superheterodyne tuner knowledge are alive and well, but lacking in the requisite test equipment.
 
I have the equipment and the knowledge but chancesi are it is ok as is.... If you want it done let me know but it would not be cheap..
 
I was thinking more of a preventative thing; it sounds fantastic with a nice big Galaxie 17 in the loft; "if it ain't broke...."

Might just leave as is.

M
 
Michael L said:
I was thinking more of a preventative thing; it sounds fantastic with a nice big Galaxie 17 in the loft; "if it ain't broke...."

Might just leave as is.

M
Click to expand...

The biggest single issue with something like your ST-A7B is random failure of IC's, which are made of purest unobtainium by now. Wear of electrolytics is obvious another issue but in a tuner voltages are generally only 12V or so and they usually run cool so life can be several times that expected from electrolytics in a power amp.
In RF equipment such as your tuner there are certain areas, such as the "Front End" in which the precise layout of the components is critical due to whats known as stray reactances (capacitive and inductive) and is taken into account by the alignment procedure. If it is totally disassemble to fit all new capacitors etc then it would also need the alignment checking and tweaking.
The upshot of all this is that:

A/ It's probably fine as it is.
B/ There is no guarantee against a rare IC randomly failing no matter what you do.
C/ If you had to ask how much it would cost to replace all electrolytics and re-align it.........
 
Arkless Repairs said:
The biggest single issue with something like your ST-A7B is random failure of IC's, which are made of purest unobtainium by now. Wear of electrolytics is obvious another issue but in a tuner voltages are generally only 12V or so and they usually run cool so life can be several times that expected from electrolytics in a power amp.
In RF equipment such as your tuner there are certain areas, such as the "Front End" in which the precise layout of the components is critical due to whats known as stray reactances (capacitive and inductive) and is taken into account by the alignment procedure. If it is totally disassemble to fit all new capacitors etc then it would also need the alignment checking and tweaking.
The upshot of all this is that:

A/ It's probably fine as it is.
B/ There is no guarantee against a rare IC randomly failing no matter what you do.
C/ If you had to ask how much it would cost to replace all electrolytics and re-align it.........
Click to expand...

Sounds like good advice to me - far too much fixing of things that aren`t broke goes on in my opinion.
 
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