[movetheworld]

And here I am: still using my first receiver ever, an Onkyo. It's still runs great after being in use for over twenty(!) years. My Philips CD player won't open the tray and my Aiwa Cassette deck won't play any cassette, but my Onkyo is still kicking. Maybe the models from the recent years don't have the quality as it used to be.

By the way, I just checked the backplate and it's an Onkyo TX-9031 RDS receiver from 1993 - time just flies ...

[christoph]

Isn’t it lovely when you realise you have electronics that have lasted nearly three decades and are still useful?

Onkyo were always well known for packing cutting edge features into home cinema amps. They always had way more features and codec support than anyone else. Nobody else came close for “bang for buck”, but they definitely had serious reliability issues.

Thinking about it tonight, just having some slow spinning fans probably would have alleviated 90%+ of their issues. But I guess the “audiophiles” would have complained about that…

[hilbert42]

"Isn’t it lovely when you realise you have electronics that have lasted nearly three decades and are still useful?

My Sony 100W per channel amplifier dates from around 1972 - '73 and it still performs perfectly. Moreover, none of the potentiometers (volume control, etc.) has gone scratchy with age, nor has any of the electrolytic capacitors lost sufficient capacity to a point where hum is induced in the output. Essentially, this 50 year old amplifier is still in perfect working condition.

Oh, BTW, it has a handbook complete with circuit diagram and a list of replacement parts if anything were to go wrong but I've never had to use it in earnest.

When I look at the poor state and quality of electronics products these days I often wonder why we consumers let their quality and the service thereof fall to such a shocking low standard over recent decades.

By not complaining sufficiently, we've only ourselves to blame.

[bluSCALE4]

This. Now that smart plugs are common, adding fans is something anyone can do effectively.

[qiqitori]

> Aiwa Cassette deck won't play any cassette

If you're interested in fixing this: it sounds like power comes on. So maybe the drive belt has disintegrated? Recently replaced a belt on a thing from the late 1970s. The belt was no longer elastic, which means it had snapped, and you could "cut" it some more by merely touching it. On Amazon you should be able to find packs of cassette rubber belts, and one or more of them will probably fit.

If/After the movement seems all right, try cleaning the heads with IPA (try pressing play without anything inserted and then clean the bits of metal that come out, as well as the capstan and pinch roller). There may be other things wrong with it (motor speed, head azimuth (angle)).

[totetsu]

I recently tried to replace the belt on a mini perl cassette recorder. The shape of the belt wasn't round, it was a semicircle on the outer side and a wedge shape on the inner. How does one even Google that XD

[djantje]

"v belt cassette recorder" Duckduckgo gave me a gem: cassettedrivebelts.com

[cseleborg]

> try cleaning the heads with IPA

I've had mixed results with cleaning heads with IPA. My head often seems very sluggish the next morning, and other people with whom I spend such evenings have reported similar results with their heads.

[galaxyLogic]

I remember those days people used to say if it's Japanese at least you don't need to worry about quality. There was also this "quality movement" in Japan.