My pioneer intragrated system which must be 25 yrs old by now and hasn't seen the light of day for many years was plugged in this eve. Problem: the amp which is model ax530 doesn't appear to have geat power. There a little bit of static, also when u turn the volume to half way up you hear a click and the sound dissappears, turn back to zero and it clicks back in. I know the speakers are fine, also noticed that it may be set on CD but if you plug into other chanels it continues to play even though you havent selected that chanel. At this stage you can clearly see I'm no teckie, just wondering if anybody else has had a similar problem, and will I have to spend a fortune to get her going again.
Plugging in old gear and going straight to play can often kill old dry parts. Ideally, your stuff would have been brought up to voltage slowly, to charge old capacitors, etc.
A bit of wisdom is a great thing, at my age you'd imagine I would have gathered some along the way, obviously not when it comes to teckie stuff. Thanks for the reply, suppose I'll just have to try and pick one up on my travels.
At this point you probably haven't destroyed any power supply caps or you would be hearing a loud 60Hz hum. But as Nuck says plugging old gear that has sat idle for years directy into 120VAC can be deleterious to the life of the equipment. Even if you repair this unit now, the damage could become evident in the near future and probably just when you want some music.
Let me guess, you wanted this for a Xmas party and now you're sort of in a bind?
Well, the bind part is correct if not the holiday party, I doubt you'll want to repair this component given its age and its original selling price. What might have happened is the master control IC has been damaged or the portion of the power supply that feeds voltage to the IC has gone haywire. A new IC will cost more than the unit sold for, if it is available after all these years. If it is just a power supply component or defective part feeding the IC that is at fault, then you might get by with fewer dollars spent but you also might still have a problem finding anyone who wants to work on a 25 year old Pioneer. Most techs will get about $60-75 per hour and flat rate the repair at about 1 1/2 - 2 hours work plus parts. It would be highly unusual for any shop to have these parts in stock unless it is as simple as a generic cap or resistor.
I would say your best option is to replace this unit and, if you want to investigate repairs on the Pioneer, you can take your time finding a technician to do the work and ask for an estimate before you make a decision to repair or to junk the unit.
Most modern shops will charge for the estimate. If you get the work done, they will 'forget' the estimate charge...it has already been rolled into the work being done.