JVC RC 550JW is d.o.a.

[dhazelton]

Hello,

First time poster...

I found El Diablo on the side of the road with a "FREE not working" sign next to it. I did a fast u turn and since I like shortwave radios I snatched it up. Only after googling the model number did I realize how desirable this unit is.

Cosmetically it's fairly rough, but not worse than others I've seen online. Antenna is broken off. Inside was just really dusty, no blown caps or anything obviously amiss. I couldn't get any power before I cleaned the little metal contacts in the plug receptacle and now get 12 VDC at the board and the dial light will come on but I have no sound out of the speakers at all. When I put an ear bud in I get static but it doesn't change in volume at all when I try adjusting the VOL slider. I haven't tried 8 D cells yet but since I get power at the board I assume that's not it.

My wife said 'just sell it' but I'd like to hear it and see how it does on SW.

Do I just need to do a full recap before any thing else? I managed to find the service manual online.

Thanks!

 

[mmcodomino]

Congrats on your find!
My guess is that your volume slider might be defective. I have heard about a couple of cases of a broken volume control on this model.
It is fairly easy to take apart so checking the volume control with a multimeter can't hurt.
As far as recapping goes...it's a matter of belief in my opinion. It might improve the sound of some radios or it might not. I have owned well over 300 radios throughout the years and never changed a capacitor on any of them. All my M90s sounded great with their original caps. So did all my 550s. Probably owned about 8 of those, always slowly upgrading to one in better condition than the previous one.
From what I know, the 550 is a very solid box and definitely worth saving. So good luck! I am sure the people of this great forum will help you on your mission!

 

[dhazelton]

Thanks! Will I just be looking for resistance values in the slider? I'll pull that assembly out and see what's what.

 

[MyOhMy]

"I found El Diablo on the side of the road with a "FREE not working" sign next to it."....................Nah!!! Dear me, you need to do a drive by a couple of times a day if that's the level of rubbish being discarded in the area. Whatever you do, don't sell it at the moment, do as much as you can by way of cleaning and repair to make a better informed decision later. Jeez, well done indeed!

Oh, by the way: Welcome to the forum.

 

[dhazelton]

Ha....yes Myohmy, I was pretty surprised. I went out during bulk collection time in the spring and came home with a couple of 90s SONY boomboxes with either a bad CD laser or broken antenna plus a JVC mini stereo unit with nice speakers. Radios and tapes work fine. People just listen to music on their phones now and a lot of this stuff just takes up space.

Oh - I forget to mention that the tape deck on this RC 550 doesn't do anything either, that's why I thought the power board had some issue.

 

[JVC Floyd]

You could hook up a power supply directly to the board to see if it powers up. Also check the transformer board to see of power is present.

 

[dhazelton]

Hi Floyd, I was going to do that before I got the dial light to come on but it may not be enough juice to make sound pixies. I have a 12 volt battery pack to jump start a car and just need to make some jumpers, I'll report back when I do that,

 

[Dbzerk]

Whaaaaaaaaaaa... on the side of the road!
What a find!

 

[dhazelton]

Whaaaaaaaaaaa... on the side of the road!
What a find!

The same guy put an old wooden 1930s tombstone radio out with a free sign but by the time I saw it after several days of rain it was falling apart.

 

[MyOhMy]

Whaaaaaaaaaaa... on the side of the road!
What a find!

..................................an old wooden 1930s tombstone radio...............................

A, apt description like no other, I love it!

 

[dhazelton]

So I've cleaned the AC input and gotten 12 VDC to the main board and cleaned all the switches as well as I could with Deoxit ($22 a can?!). I put another source (small radio) to the speakers and they seem to work fine. I cleaned the headphone jack and worked a plug back and forth and I managed to finally get some sound coming out of the speakers from the FM band but all the other bands seem dead. The sound from the speaker is weak but it is there and does not respond in changes to the volume slider. All caps look perfectly fine. The cassette unit does nothing.

Any idea where to look next? I get 12 VDC at the board but is there an amperage minimum I should look for to rule out the power supply? I tried hooking up my microstart jump pack which will power a laptop and got no change.

Thanks in advance.