A flat part won't work? If not how about get a thicker piece and router a relief along the edge?
It ain't easy.... being GZ!
- Thread starter blu_fuz
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Well, let's be honest, you won't find brand new parts and this is unfortunately part of life working on obsolete items, even if this wasn't (in the grand scheme of things) a tiny virtually irrelevant brand in the electronics industry compared to giants such as JVC, Matsushita, Sanyo/Fisher, etc.
So while an edge routered acrylic window might not seem as good as an original acrylic injection molded part, it should truly be a joy to have a brand new unscratched, perfectly clear new window as opposed to the discolored, scratched, cracked one. You can't see the backside so only the front appearance would be important anyhow. The only wildcard is whether they can flame polish or otherwise polish the routered edge so it's not white colored, and that might be important depending upon whether the mounted window sits proud of the cabinet face, or recessed.
So while an edge routered acrylic window might not seem as good as an original acrylic injection molded part, it should truly be a joy to have a brand new unscratched, perfectly clear new window as opposed to the discolored, scratched, cracked one. You can't see the backside so only the front appearance would be important anyhow. The only wildcard is whether they can flame polish or otherwise polish the routered edge so it's not white colored, and that might be important depending upon whether the mounted window sits proud of the cabinet face, or recessed.
caution
Member (SA)
Well Norm you got me back into TAP last Saturday and told them just to cut me a piece with 45's along the top and bottom. Then I had them cut me up a square rod that I'm thinking I'll glue together. Slips in nicely. Thinking I'll use some E6000 to bond them together, but first I'm going to look at the possibility of cutting out the cracked window and gluing the new face to the old molding so I still have all that there. I'm afraid it might look too open in there without it. You can sort of see from the angles on the original piece how they actually look quite close to what they made.
I finished overhauling the aux mode switches on both control boards as well as the stereo mode switch on the the original amp board Joe sent me (the dead one). The control board that was in the box is now completely scratch free.
That takes care of GZ's boards, but I wanted to repair the original boards first, they arrived last week. The control board only needed an aux switch cleaning so far, but there is a tiny bit of scratching coming through and it seems to be either on the bass knob or mode switch, they're the only real possibilities.
The amp board, I'm glad to say, is back from the dead! When I first powered it up I instantly got a hum on the right channel and nothing on the left, or maybe a little buzzing. Whatever. It was toast. So, I popped new 1392's in there and all of a sudden things were dead silent, save a little crackling now and then.
I was worried the big cap might be leaking like the other one, so I yanked it, but it was fine. I ended up finding an equal capacitance/voltage in a smaller size on a newer board from something else, so I put that on to be safe.
I started poking around with a ohmmeter between the good amp board and the bad one to see if I could find any differences, and I decided to start at the big transistor over by itself. Call it luck but the very first measurement I took was a hit! The diode in front of it was toast, totally shorted out.
It has the mark "Z 11" on both the good and bad boards. It seemed that meant it was an 11V zener, so I looked around on some scrap boards but nothing close to that. I ordered a variety pack with that value yesterday. At this point I wasn't sure if more was toasted on the board as well, so I bought some extras for the other two big transistors just in case.
I decided to go over to the surplus store near me today (hey, any excuse to go over there, ha!) and found some 10V and 12V zeners in their bins. I bought a couple of 12V zeners and to my delight the thing started working! I notice the drop across the diode is 12.2V, but the good board with the original diode still there is about 11.7V, so it's probably not off enough to be damaging, but I'll wait until I get the 11V zeners and pop one of those in there instead.
One thing weird was that with the shorted diode in there, not even the volume knob had an effect. My guess is this diode is part of the circuit that the audio is sent through for the alarm function, which under normal operation will completely silence the audio output.
There was a black wire double-connecting one of the stereo mode switch pins to the wire post it ended up at, and I took that off. Some funky changes to the resistor on the FM LED board were made but it seems to work!
I finished overhauling the aux mode switches on both control boards as well as the stereo mode switch on the the original amp board Joe sent me (the dead one). The control board that was in the box is now completely scratch free.
That takes care of GZ's boards, but I wanted to repair the original boards first, they arrived last week. The control board only needed an aux switch cleaning so far, but there is a tiny bit of scratching coming through and it seems to be either on the bass knob or mode switch, they're the only real possibilities.
The amp board, I'm glad to say, is back from the dead! When I first powered it up I instantly got a hum on the right channel and nothing on the left, or maybe a little buzzing. Whatever. It was toast. So, I popped new 1392's in there and all of a sudden things were dead silent, save a little crackling now and then.
I was worried the big cap might be leaking like the other one, so I yanked it, but it was fine. I ended up finding an equal capacitance/voltage in a smaller size on a newer board from something else, so I put that on to be safe.
I started poking around with a ohmmeter between the good amp board and the bad one to see if I could find any differences, and I decided to start at the big transistor over by itself. Call it luck but the very first measurement I took was a hit! The diode in front of it was toast, totally shorted out.
It has the mark "Z 11" on both the good and bad boards. It seemed that meant it was an 11V zener, so I looked around on some scrap boards but nothing close to that. I ordered a variety pack with that value yesterday. At this point I wasn't sure if more was toasted on the board as well, so I bought some extras for the other two big transistors just in case.
I decided to go over to the surplus store near me today (hey, any excuse to go over there, ha!) and found some 10V and 12V zeners in their bins. I bought a couple of 12V zeners and to my delight the thing started working! I notice the drop across the diode is 12.2V, but the good board with the original diode still there is about 11.7V, so it's probably not off enough to be damaging, but I'll wait until I get the 11V zeners and pop one of those in there instead.
One thing weird was that with the shorted diode in there, not even the volume knob had an effect. My guess is this diode is part of the circuit that the audio is sent through for the alarm function, which under normal operation will completely silence the audio output.
There was a black wire double-connecting one of the stereo mode switch pins to the wire post it ended up at, and I took that off. Some funky changes to the resistor on the FM LED board were made but it seems to work!
caution
Member (SA)
Got a bit late tonight after getting it all buttoned up to do a full post, but here's a teaser 
https://youtube.com/watch?v=H36DH09uG4g
https://youtube.com/watch?v=H36DH09uG4g
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