Yep, my speakers distorted horribly. Check your DC on the outputs, mine was sky high. Caused by bad filter caps on the power amp board. I pulled the amp on mine and recapped it - sounded awesome after. I measured the voltage on the inputs of the STK power pack amp and it was in the order of 40 volts or so - not great for speakers !! Replacing the caps dropped it to nearly nothing.
You say the TT won't fire up ? What's the issue ? Will the door open / close ? Can you manually open by sticking a rod into the hole in the back ? On mine, the door wouldn't open because two of the three door position switches were broken. This meant that the CPU could not work out whether the door was open or closed. In turn, this condition meant that the gear change solenoid did not operate to switch the motor from tone arm drive position to door open / close position.
My TT needed two new door position micro switches, two transistors, a relay and several other bits to get it going. Needed a belt too.
some of my threads on Audiokarma (I think there's one on here too)
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/sharp-vz-3000-restored-pics-and-massive-thanks-to-akers.769294/
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/sharp-vz-3000-upright-both-sides-play-linear-tracking-system.724041/
Someone somewhere said these units are just a collection of engineering mishaps just waiting to go wrong - I disagree, I think they contain some very clever engineering which perhaps could have been made better by using higher quality parts in some places.
