Technics SA-R210 Receiver (2023 Update)

I've got an old Technics SA-R210 stereo receiver from the 80's which I've relied on for ages.

Woke up this morn and it played for a while, then . Powered down, let it sit 10 min., powered up and it worked again for 15 min., then .

Receiver is in a cabinet with little ventilation. Obviously likely to be a heat related problem.

Does this suggest a particular component? I can bench-test, solder a little. How difficult to repair DIY??

Thx, P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

Reply to
Puddin' Man
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, > let it sit 10 min., powered up and it worked again for 15 min., then . >

I have one of those and an SA-160. The 160 had a problem with cracked solder joints on voltage regulator transistors on the main heatsink. The 160 is a little odd to disassmble and I think the 210 is similar. Got a digital camera? take lots of pics as you open it up so you can get it back. You _might_ have a thermally intermittent power regulator but bad (metal fatigue) solder is far more common.

G=B2

Reply to
stratus46

Yup.

Will do.

Not sure when I'll be able to get to it. Too many irons in the fire ...

So ... find the big heatsink. Voltage regulator is on this unit? Remove regulator cover to find transistors and possibly cracked joints??

Much Thanks, P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

Reply to
Puddin' Man

Hi!

You should move it to a place where it can get better ventilation. Some of these run quite hot.

Is this receiver losing power totally, or do some functions (like the display and tuning buttons) continue to work? If it does, I'd bet that it's going into protection to save your speakers from a disaster. Most--if not all--of these units used Sanyo hybrid audio amplifier ICs (a large many-legged black thing) and I think it's safe to say those were the weakest point of them. They don't like heat and it seems like Technics skimped on the heatsink in many of these units.

William

Reply to
William R. Walsh

No covers over the transistors, just bolted straight to the heatsink and should be visible once the unit's case is off. Cracked-right-round joints on any heatsink mounted devices are very common on Technics. Most models not too bad to strip to the point where you can get to the underside of the board. As the other poster said, take pics if not confident that you can remember where all the screws go back.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

On Aug 18, 5:52=A0pm, "William R. Walsh" wrote: > Hi! >

A properly operating SA-R210 idles at a very modest temperature. Obviously it warms up if delivering serious power but by and large the heat output is pretty modest - certainly not above average.

I just checked the service manual for the 210 and it does mount the regulator transistors on the main heatsink flanking the main audio power IC. Q705 reduces the -48 to -19.7. Q701 and 702 are in parallel to drop the +48 to +15.6. Note that there are regulators following these to achieve -13.9, +15.5 (capacitor multiplier) and +5.7 for the microprocessor (using another diode to get to +5V).

On the similar SA-160 which has 2 regulator transistors on the main heat sink, all 6 terminals were cracked loose. After re-soldering those I unsoldered the main power IC and resoldered it too since it is mounted the same way as the transistors. Surprisingly, none of the foil pads were damaged.

On my R210 the solder connections under the volume raise / lower buttons cracked making the buttons flaky. Re-soldering them left it working perfectly again. No bad pads on this unit either.

G=B2

Reply to
stratus46

I pulled the shelf above to give it more room. Put a little fan on a stand, directed flow to the chassis vents. Ran for maybe a couple hours before audio failed again.

The front display panel remains lighted. Looks normal but no sound. Jiggling wires has no effect.

Could be for all I know. I'll put the unit on my work-bench today, take a closer look.

I actually have 2 SA-R210 receivers. Both have problems. The other one, with bad power switch and maybe cracked audio output joints, has been pressed into service.

Thx, P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

Reply to
Puddin' Man

On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:21:21 -0700 (PDT), snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote: ...

This is consistent with my experience with them. I've been running mine 15-16 hours/day for about the last 10 years.

I am finding Q705, Q701 and 702 markings and the regulator transistors etc on the main board/heatsink, no problem.

If you could render just a rough break-down of what was involved in resoldering the regulator transistors, it might well enable me to repair this unit.

I am:

a.) A relative bonehead re detailed electronic repairs. b.) Willing to learn. Retired, with a house-full of electronic stuff. Much of it can't be replaced, something breaks most every day.

I can post pics if it would be helpful.

Thx, P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

Reply to
Puddin' Man

A simple voltmeter can give a lot of information particularly while it's in 'failed' mode. While power devices (transistors and the main audio power IC) can go 'thermal, I haven't seen a thermally sensitive transistor in many years. The most common way back when was the TO-220 case devices - just like Q 701,702 and 705 but I would put money on bad solder joints.

G=B2

Reply to
stratus46

If you could render just a rough break-down of what was involved in resoldering the 6 terminals, it would be very much appreciated.

Thx, P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

Reply to
Puddin' Man

Reworking cracked joints on a practical level involves no more than applying a nice hot iron to the side of the joint, then when the existing solder melts, running a small amount - no more than 2 or 3 mm - of new flux-cored solder into the molten joint. Hold the iron on the joint for a further 1 to

2 seconds, then slide it quickly away. This should leave a nice shiny joint (assuming this is standard leaded solder) with no signs of a crack, dullness, or crystalline appearance. If you want to be really pedantic about the job, you can remove the existing solder first, before making a new joint with fresh solder, but in order to do that, you would need at the very least some solder wick, and if you lack the soldering experience to be able to go for this repair without checking on the best way to go about it first, I guess that it's going to be unlikely that you have any, or the experience to use it to clean the joint.

If you just go ahead and do it as I have described, you should be fine.

Good luck with it

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Much thanks, but I might've gotten ahead of myself a bit ...

I have 2 SA-R210's, both with problems. I put one in the shop about 10 years ago, they said they resoldered , so I figgered the problem with the other one would be cracked solder on components attached to heat-sink, per suggestions in this thread.

I have it apart on a work-bench, and can look closely. When I carefully probe solder points on components attached to heat-sink, I can't find any obvious cracks. On the Q701, 702, 705 units, there is some funny looking copper colored crud (flux?) around all solder points. The Q705 E connector appears to be soldered-to (co-conductive with) one end of a R704 resistor(?), but it's been that way for years. This is on a unit that I bought on Ebay around 5 years ago.

If I have a "thermally intermittent power regulator" (plastic near-square unit maybe 1" square, marked "Stereo Power Amp 3102 A"), I guess I'm out of luck?

Anything else to look for? Other solder points on the bottom of the main board look clean-as-a-whistle. Other components to examine/test??

Thanks, P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

Reply to
Puddin' Man

I brought the Technics SA-R210 receiver from US to Taiwan. How can I change the FREQUENCY STEP from FM/AM 200Khz/10Khz to 50Khz/9Khz to cure the problem of "No FM stereo" and "No AM"? Thanks Frank Yu

Reply to
franksyyu

It might not be possible without really major surgery... it looks as if the SA-R210 may have been made specifically for the US and Canadian markets.

The manual says that in manual-tuning mode, the FM can be stepped along at a 100 kHz increment. It may be only the "auto-scan" tuning which insists on stopping only on the odd 100 kHz frequencies.

On some Technics receivers of that era, pressing the "AM" button for four seconds or more will toggle the tuner between 10kHz and 9 kHz channels.

You could try a similar long-press on the FM button to see if there's an undocumented frequency-offset change in the firmware.

Reply to
Dave Platt

On Tuesday, August 25, 2015 at 8:57:44 AM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com.tw wrote :

ge the FREQUENCY STEP from FM/AM 200Khz/10Khz to 50Khz/9Khz to cure the pro blem of "No FM stereo" and "No AM"?

You need skill. Here are the documents you need, if you have the skill to m ake the mods you have the skill to read the docs :

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Once there scroll down through the preview to some text, in that text you w ill find the word "processing". Watch that and when it changes to "Get manu al in a minute or so, click it and download it like anytihng else. They jus t make you wait to be, well, you know.

That does not tellya, but it does tellme that it uses a certain chip for th is, and the datasheeet will tell you :

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(they just lopped off a couple letter ans inserted "SVI" like they usually do)

If they don't allow a direct link it cam from here :

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there is like a spreadsheet of listings after the ads at the top, on the le ft there is a screenshot ot what looks like a datasheet front page. Under t hat are words. the last one is Download, that is the actual link.

I see there are pins going to the keybord that will nee to be set high or l ow logic levels. Good stuff gives you a switch, in this you might have to c ut foil, and you will certainly have to install a jumper somewhere. No real ly, sometimes, rarely it is justy a matter of cutting something.

Same shit happens with shortwave radios sometimes. There are bands that are discouraged from being receivable in the US because SW braodcasts are supp osed to ge intended for foreigh audiences. I remember the f***ed with Ameri can Dissident Voices of that. but the fat is the bands ADV broadcast on are not generally available on the regular SW receivers sold here. Apparently the FCC did not want us to hear what this country was putting out to the wo rld. Go figure. This all goes back to why DVDs have REGIONS. We should be s hooting them over that shit.

Anyway, the FM in the US has a high modulation, I believe it is +/- 75 KHz instead of +/- 50 KHz. It has to be a wider bandwitch for the same performa nce. We need like 200 KHz bandwidth for good performance, like down to like 0.4 % in stereo at full limiting. That is spretty good figure and you ain' t going to get that here, you are not going to get rated performance with t hose IF filters, and the level WILL be too high because the detector is cal ibrated differently. Careful listening miugh reveal distortion due to that. there are two options if you want to be an audiophile about it but let's g et htis done first ansd see how it sounds. It HAS enough bandwidth, and if you listen mostly to classical or jazz n shit, it might be just fine, and w irth a bit lower noise level. But at 100 % modulation, the thing is not goi ng to meet its rated specs in THD.

Actually, I can fix that, but is it worth it ?

Reply to
jurb6006

Unfortunately, long-press on the AM/FM bouton will not work for this proble m. The PLL IC could be SANYO LM 70XX, or Matsushita AN7273, AN7470.... Let me find out later, then, see what I can do by modified the on board HW sett ing. I will try to down load the service manual again and again.... Thanks .

Reply to
franksyyu

Thank you man! for those links that's for SA-210K model not mine SA-R210, a remote control model. I disassemble the unit, and found the internal circu it were totally different, such as SANYO LM7001 16pin PLL synthesizer worki ng at 7.2MHz quartz crystal; MITSUBISHI M50720 408SP 42pin PDV display driv er; SANYO LC6512A,LC6513A 4 bit uP controller.... There is no uPD 1703 as y ou found on SA-210K.

Now, the problem for me is how can I find a free down load of the service m anuals for SA-R210? One for US and one for EU model to compare. Cause they sell the hard copy for 20 euro/dollar of each that I can nearly buy a vinta ge unit on the eBay. Anyone has the idea to help, please...Frank

Reply to
franksyyu

On my SA-R210 everything works except no sound output. ?

Reply to
hi2jimbob

Reply to
Peter W.

When I bought mine 20 years ago the eBay listing said barely no sound output. It was missing the pre-out/ main in jumpers which was all that was wrong with it. It still works fine.

Reply to
Glenn Gundlach

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