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I could use a little help with a Sansui AU 222

dirtman

The Dirtman
I recently bought the amp off CL to give it to my youngest son for his birthday. It played but was quite noisy. Hissing a humming on various settings. I opened it up and could see signs of cap leakage so I decided to get on with it. I ordered all new Nichicon audio grade caps for everything. I also replaced a tantalums that are on the head amp board after reading several post about them here.
After the recap it sounded better sonically but had some snapping and popping and the hiss remained. Back to the search function I went and discovered that it had a couple 2sc458 trans in there. So I proceeded to change them out with a set of matched 2240s.
Now the crackling and popping is gone but the hiss and hum remain. This is where I could use a little help.
This is what it is doing:
Aux 2 - low level of hiss, variable with volume, music plays well.
Aux 1 - low level of hiss, variable with volume, slightly less than Aux 2.
Phono 2 - Much louder hiss, low level hum on the right channel. Hum gets a little quieter when i touch the volume knob.
Phono 1 - Same as phono 2 only not quite as loud.
Tape - Very loud hiss while on source. Almost sounds like a waterfall. a little hum. Behaves like aux 1 when I switch to tape mon. I played music through the tape mon and it plays/acts just like it was on Aux 1.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
 
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One of my favorite little amps, a perfect matching tuner is a TU 555.
Redo the grounds first, sounds like bad grounds to me.
 
Thank you nosirrah. I will reflow. Yes, I've bee looking for one of those tuners for a while now. Had one slip past me at auction recently.
 
Are there any connections into phono and tape? IIRC, the tape may actually be for a tape head input, which is high gain and will be very noisy if no input. Same for phone. Originally was probably shipped with shorting jacks in the unused low level inputs (phone and tape). Shorting jack is just an RCA jack with signal and ground connected together. If the inputs are high gain some hiss may be normal with nothing plugged into them.
 
Thank you Steve. Nothing connected except the Ipod i tested with. That would be too easy wouldn't it?! I will make a set with a junk cable and give it a shot before I warm up the soldering iron.
 
Thought I would do a quick update on this thread. It seems the shorting jacks cured most of the problem. I made a few out of some old cables. I am still getting a little hiss at full volume but I am thinking this may be inherent of the 222. I could be wrong but I can live with like it is. Over all it sounds great with the new caps and transistors. Now i'm on the quest for the elusive matching tuner. Thanks for the help!!

edit - I did check all the boards for ground and signs of bad joints as well. I couldn't find any signs of trouble. There were some locations where there was hard "crud" between the traces so I cleaned them up as best I could, careful not to cause any damage.
 
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This amp is different than most because the AUX inputs go thru the same transistors as the phono input but with reduced gain and no EQ. So those first two stages are used for everything except the Tape Monitor input.

Sregor was dead on right. Tape on the selector knob is for a tape head. You can convert this input into another aux input by mimicing the aux input resistors on S01a and eq on S01b

I can't find any 458s in the schematic. I assume they are the transistors that are called out as 2SC871s on the schematic. They are the first transistor in the head amp, the tone transistor, and the first stage of the drivers.

If you replaced those all with 2240s you're done. It is what it is. Which is a sweet little amp! Congrats on the great work!
 
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