Beomaster 900K tuner repairs

15 replies

I've picked up a beomaster 900K which has a few issues, the main one being the tuner being inoperative on all bands. The unit powers up fine and power supply voltages all seem good, other issues being that it sounds very "bassy" unless turned to a minimum. Phono and tape inputs work if a little "hissy" unless the tape input is set high.

The archive forum of this site suggests faulty AF116 transistors as a common fault for the tuner so I'll be taking a closer look at these in the next few days. The reason of posting is to ask if there is a recap kit available anywhere to save me identifying all the electrolytics and then ordering probably a lot more than I'll need.

Welcome to Beoworld !

Your Beomaster will need two fresh IF transistors.
In the vast majority of these Beomasters, the capacitors will still be fine and I don't have a kit for this model
for the same reason.
If, after replacing the IF transistors, the sound is still muddy, you can take a look at the capacitors related to the tonecontrol
but I see no need to replace the whole lot unless your Beomaster is in a very bad general state.

Martin

Update - replaced the two transistors and radio now working nicely on all bands. I still need to check the bass/treble circuits and have realised that if I turn the treble right down there is a crackle and the right speaker gets significantly louder albeit at worse sound quality so still some work to do.

One question - not having seen a user manual I assume the meter on the left of the display is a signal strength meter - it moves when tuning MW but seems to stay at 5 all the time for FM - not what I would expect.

Thanks for the welcome and for the archive - saved me significant time!

The signal meter should also work on FM.
It may sound strange but the meter will stay at max deflection if the IF signal is too weak.
The reason for this is that it reacts negatively (measuring "noise") and is at rest at max deflection.
If the noise level is not high enough, the meter reading will not fall.

Either there is still some fault in the IF circuit or the type of IF transistors mounted may not be suitable (or one of them is bad).
What type did you use ?

Martin

Replaced with AF126, the actual tuner tunes in very well even with the built-in aerial. The meter moves much more on the other bands.

AF126, though often seen listed as a direct replacement, in my experience, is not particularly good with
frequencies this high.
In other words, I don't really like this transistor.
Try with f.e. AF109r. I have used this type myself for years with good results.
If you fit it upside down (or at the solder side of the board) with the indicator pin
facing towards the rear of the Beomaster, the pinout is correct. 😂

Martin

So the radio has been working nicely for the last couple of weeks, only in the last day it seems to have lost some of its ability to find weaker stations. STill gets the local stations fine but stations it previously found easily are now a bit of a struggle. Also noticed that the "stereo" light is now flickering in time with the music rather than solid on. 

All no-signal voltages all look acceptable so any pointers gratefully accepted!

The stereo decoder circuit, slightly depending on the exact version of decoder, is quite sensitive
to the IF signal quality. If the IF is weak, the stereo decoder will not sense the MPX signal or be running "on the edge"
which it often as the flickering stereo indicator lamp, you mentioned.

As said above, with transistors rated for max 75MHz pushed to 88-108 MHz, I think, I would worry
about them first.

Martin

Must be some kind of misunderstanding here.Aren't we talking IF transistors?

Yes these are the IF - so ~10Mhz should be their working area? I am at risk of showing my ignorance here though! I have the schematic but need to sit down and figure out the various parts such as oscillator, filters etc to be able to debug it properly, I do have a scope to use so will have a further look around.

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