Balance not working

[dave175]

Hi

I have a receiver about 10 yrs old that the balance suddenly quit working. I hate to throw away a good receiver, but I am not exactly sure if I there is an inexpensive part I need to buy and it's back functioning again or if I should throw it away.

The receiver is not digital and the volume control has been very sensitive over the past few months. In fact, if I wiggled the knob I would hear static until the balance worked. But, at this point it looks like the "wiggling" does not work anymore and balance is all to the left speaker no matter where the balance knob if facing.

I appreciate any input or help to get this fixed.

Thanks

[Kursun]

Usually a contact cleaner spray cures such potentiometer problems. But your balance potentiometer seems to be past this stage and needs to be replaced.

If you can not find a suitable replacement potentiometer, a quick fix would be bypassing the potentiometer using two fixed valued resistors. Look to see if you can reach the back of the potentiometer. Its value should be printed on the potentiometer. If it is 47K, buy two 22K fixed resistors, wire them in series, unsolder the leads coming to the potentiometer and solder them to the resistors.

This cheap fix assumes that you are handy with the soldering iron, and more important: that you can do without using the balance control (for 2-ch, I hardly ever use the balance control).

[poneal]

Since I am not much with a soldering iron and electronics in general, I would take the receiver to an electronics repair shop and see how much it would cost to fix it. If it cost more than 50-75 dollars then I would probably sell it on ebay and buy another reciever.