What was the worst?

[electra225]

What item of electronics was the worst to work on you have ever encountered? Something that made you threaten to toss it? Something that made you question if you needed a different hobby? Be specific, please.

The worst thing I ever worked on was an inverted bakelite chassis Zenith. No room to work, everything crammed together. I had to take it apart to figure out where the wiring all went. I got it to work, but was thrilled to see it get a new owner. One of the few pre-war Zenith sets I ever worked on that was not infested in some component with green crud. This radio caused me to divest myself of most of my Zenith sets.

[TC Chris]

I've got a Marantz portable cassette recorder, a"professional" model that really was used by news organizations, etc. Eventually it developed belt problems. The service manual is written in Japanese English and seems to describe a different unit. Everything is crammed together in close quarters inside. Eventually I closed it up and decided to try again when my temper was under control.

Chris Campbell

[William]

I have actually had three units that were pains. My Imperial, my VM 562, and my RCA 1-R-81 table radio. The VM and the RCA were pains because someone else had been there before me and really did a hack job making it real fun trying to figure out how to undo what they did.

The Imperial's story I had shared before. It was one of those units that you think you have it right and something else pops up. The biggest pain was trying to figure out why the RH channel has low volume and then as you increased the volume it disappeared. Once you reached the full volume position it would kick in full blast. I tested everything I could think of trying to try and figure out "WHY". Finally, with the help of friends and the gift of a signal tracer I found one half of the volume pot to be bad. I removed the volume pot, opened it up, and found the only thing left was just a trace of carbon material at each end, everything in between was gone. The next fun thing was finding a new one. I spent a lot of time surfing the net with no results. Again, a friend suggested that I call Mark Oppat to see if he had something that would work. I first called, but no answer and left a message. No response. I tried again, no response. I tried emailing him, no response. Finally, after a month plus I heard from him. He said yes, he could help, and told me what to do on his site to get one coming. It was probably 2-3 months later before it finally showed up. The good news, it was correct, and I finally had two channels working on the Imperial. Of course, that was not the end of the troubles. Shortly after that victory, the switch piggy backed on the function control stopped working. That switch allowed the whole unit to turn off when playing records, when it does not work, nothing worked. Again, I reached out to Mark Oppat, and again he said he could help. This time the service was much faster, and I had the replacement within a month. Unfortunately, the switch was not the correct one so instead of looking for another switch I did bypass surgery. I extended the wires from the chassis to the outside of the cabinet. I then made a small bracket out of aluminum and mounted the bypass switch to it leaving the knob part of the switch barely visible. After connecting the wires, I fired the Imperial up and everything worked as it should.

Now you know one of my worst experiences learning this new hobby of mine. Friends came to my rescue and if it weren't for them, I probably would have given up. One nice thing about the bypass switch, the changer will work whether in the radio position or phono position. I know that sounds wrong, but in the phono position the amp is still functioning so if I want to continue playing records and not have the amp shut off in between record change out, it does. If I want the changer to shut off everything when done I put the bypass switch in the changer position. I may never find the correct switch to make my Imperial all original, but I'm ok with that. I have a working Imperial, and at this point it is the best sounding console I have. Actually, it's a tie between the Imperial and the Berkshire.

Bill

[electra225]

Don't forget the RCA K-80. That one was a challenge as well.

You got dealt a couple of dud hands, but you followed "the rules", stayed with it, didn't give up, so you got some beautiful electronics that you can enjoy for a long time. Pat yourself on the back.....