Realistic STA-84

jbmundy

New Member
I have had this receiver for a few months now and every thing seems to be working fine. Though I just spent a decent amount of money to replace/fix my speakers and just want to make sure this receiver is working properly while I wait for my speaker parts to arrive. I gave it a good little bath with some deoxit, but I don't really know how to tell if capacitors are bad or not. It seems like a pretty straight forward unit to work on but I was just wondering where should I start.
I plan on checking the dc offset of my speaker terminals.
I am somewhat comfortable with soldering and have a "parts" mcs receiver I am willing to practice on.
Any suggestions are welcome, or if anyone lives in the raleigh area and wants to teach I'm up for that too haha.
 
Testing the DC offset in your receiver is not a bad idea, and there is a really good thread here on just how to do that. (Adjusting it, or anything else, is quite another story just as that post points out.)

However, if you are going to test the capacitors in your Realistic receiver, you probably should just go ahead and replace them. They are cheap. To properly test a capacitor you need to take it out of circuit, and if you are going to do that, you may as well simply replace them.

If the set presently works well, it is not strictly necessary to replace anything. When capacitors start to fail, they most often give plenty of warning...hum in the audio, crackles and pops, and stuff like that.
 
Just out of curiosity.... if the DC offset is bad, what is the next step to fix that. Just find someone who knows what they are doing and pay them?

I have heard talk of bulging and leaking capacitors, I assume you get the "warning" when this is happening, if thats the case I won't worry about caps quite yet.

I just don't want to hurt my precious new (old) speakers.
 
Well I have checked the DC offset and one channel is a little high but I have read through a lot of that thread there are over 300 pages of people listing their offset #s so I would rather not fish through that for days trying to find a helpful link. I have yet to find one that explains steps to fix the problem.
If anyone knows anything about this receiver or can explain what to adjust and how I would appreciate it.
 
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