AntleredRuin
New member
So I got a surround sound receiver (Panasonic HT390) from my dad who got it from his sister a few years ago but never used it.
She had given it to him and bought herself a new one when one of the speaker channels stopped working (rear left).
He never bothered monkeying with it or installing it, and he gave it to me to hopefully use with my new media room setup (my existing receiver is from 1983 and does not have Dolby surround, only right and left).
When I turned it on, all the speakers worked, and the bad one worked barely at full blast. I've done some circuit level repair before on old TVs and monitors, so I thought I'd at least take a crack at it. Figured a bad solder connection or something, and at full blast there was enough juice flowing to slightly jump the gap.
Took the casing off and found some stray speaker wire strands the broke off at some point bridging the positive and negative terminals, effectively completing the circuit before the speaker got any juice. Took some tweezers and removed all the wire strands and checked the other channels as well, powered it back up, and BAM! Let there be sound.
So let this be a lesson to anyone with Receiver/Amp issues. Before chucking it and buying a new one, or spending $50+/hr on a repair, if you're having any sound issues, thoroughly check to make sure there's no sneaky stray wire strands that broke off in the receiver.
Obviously make sure that the speaker and the wire itself are good too.
(note: I'd had this same issue with my 1983 Sony a few years ago, except this one would not stay on. Click Click. On then off. Figured it was a bad capacitor on the mainboard, but found a fricking rat's nest of speaker wire that was short circuiting the entire thing.)
She had given it to him and bought herself a new one when one of the speaker channels stopped working (rear left).
He never bothered monkeying with it or installing it, and he gave it to me to hopefully use with my new media room setup (my existing receiver is from 1983 and does not have Dolby surround, only right and left).
When I turned it on, all the speakers worked, and the bad one worked barely at full blast. I've done some circuit level repair before on old TVs and monitors, so I thought I'd at least take a crack at it. Figured a bad solder connection or something, and at full blast there was enough juice flowing to slightly jump the gap.
Took the casing off and found some stray speaker wire strands the broke off at some point bridging the positive and negative terminals, effectively completing the circuit before the speaker got any juice. Took some tweezers and removed all the wire strands and checked the other channels as well, powered it back up, and BAM! Let there be sound.
So let this be a lesson to anyone with Receiver/Amp issues. Before chucking it and buying a new one, or spending $50+/hr on a repair, if you're having any sound issues, thoroughly check to make sure there's no sneaky stray wire strands that broke off in the receiver.
Obviously make sure that the speaker and the wire itself are good too.
(note: I'd had this same issue with my 1983 Sony a few years ago, except this one would not stay on. Click Click. On then off. Figured it was a bad capacitor on the mainboard, but found a fricking rat's nest of speaker wire that was short circuiting the entire thing.)
