I have an icom R7000 poor sensitivity typ only -103 dBm. I have another R7000 way better sensitivity. I suspect Icom (SAR in michigan) will tell me they no longer repair them. SO WHAT DO YOU DO THEN? Is there a REPUTABLE repair shop?
SAR is what I was going to suggest. Matt is a straight shooter and I think he'll give you an honest answer.
The issue with repairing old gear is getting replacement parts. Matt may be able to find suitable parts or fashion an alternative.
Drop him an email and see what he says.
The issue with repairing old gear is getting replacement parts. Matt may be able to find suitable parts or fashion an alternative.
Drop him an email and see what he says.
Matt IS an honest guy. I have used him a lot. He recently fixed a 706mkIIg tranceiver using a microscope. But next time it needs repair I am finished.
Hence my question. what do ya do when icom wont touch it? By the way this faulty receiver is much newer than the 1980s one I bought new which still works quite well. It has mostly just needed the DC,DC Cap replacements.
Hence my question. what do ya do when icom wont touch it? By the way this faulty receiver is much newer than the 1980s one I bought new which still works quite well. It has mostly just needed the DC,DC Cap replacements.
Ok so I talked to Matt at SAR today. As expected he told me he isnt accepting R7000 ..period. I asked him twice what do I do now? He eventually said all the people he knew have "either retired or gone away"
I really like these radios. Is there really no one out there can fix them? Do ya just throw it away?
I really like these radios. Is there really no one out there can fix them? Do ya just throw it away?
Did you consider to replace it with a R7100 in good conditions?
The R7100 is not so different than R7000 but it is better and produced more recently.
I had one in the 90s and it was a very good receiver.
If you can get a copy of the service manual many of the adjustments are merely voltage based when tuned to a specific frequency so aligning it can be partly done with nothing more than a voltmeter. I had done several R7000's this way and they worked much better after such a partial alignment.
There have also been sellers on eBay of Capacitor Sets to replace the electrolytic caps on the R7000, which seem to be a big issue. I have not done this lever of work but I have heard from others that with a reasonable set of soldering skills, patience and the right parts is doable.
There have also been sellers on eBay of Capacitor Sets to replace the electrolytic caps on the R7000, which seem to be a big issue. I have not done this lever of work but I have heard from others that with a reasonable set of soldering skills, patience and the right parts is doable.
I have an option to return the radio for a full refund. I guess that is my only option. I dont want to but REALITY is sinking in.
It is just a sad state that some can resurrect tube radios from the 30's. But no one available to work on a 1980s radio?????????
The person who sold this to me uaed to run an ICOM service facility in another country. He always does really good work on my other radios. But after 3 days gave up on this one. He thinks the problem is likely in the IF.. 1st 2nd 3rd? Dont know but sensitivity is reduced everywhere. Mostly -103 to -111dBm. Should be at least -113 in nbFM mode. I suspect something is noisy. So maybe recapping the whole IF board would help. Especially the 2nd IF 10.7MHz section and 455KHz [3rd] since selection of the first IF depends on how high ya tune and is a real high freq.. afraid to mess with that.
Also IMHO perhaps a LO is noisy.. I guess this is still considered a part of the IF? You would think someone with proper scope spectrum analyzer could pinpoint this noise.
So again I am asking 2 questions.
Do you know anyone capable of spending some time to get this corrected?
What will YOU do when your radio dies?
There are a few generations of radios beyond this one 7100 8500 etc. I doubt Matt at SAR works on any but the most recent one. I understand the parts problem. But these are typically active parts like power transistors or ICs. I suspect MOST receiver problems are caused by bad caps. This has been a problem for ages. I once fixed a tube radio, had a magic eye tuning meter. Bad cap.
It is just a sad state that some can resurrect tube radios from the 30's. But no one available to work on a 1980s radio?????????
The person who sold this to me uaed to run an ICOM service facility in another country. He always does really good work on my other radios. But after 3 days gave up on this one. He thinks the problem is likely in the IF.. 1st 2nd 3rd? Dont know but sensitivity is reduced everywhere. Mostly -103 to -111dBm. Should be at least -113 in nbFM mode. I suspect something is noisy. So maybe recapping the whole IF board would help. Especially the 2nd IF 10.7MHz section and 455KHz [3rd] since selection of the first IF depends on how high ya tune and is a real high freq.. afraid to mess with that.
Also IMHO perhaps a LO is noisy.. I guess this is still considered a part of the IF? You would think someone with proper scope spectrum analyzer could pinpoint this noise.
So again I am asking 2 questions.
Do you know anyone capable of spending some time to get this corrected?
What will YOU do when your radio dies?
There are a few generations of radios beyond this one 7100 8500 etc. I doubt Matt at SAR works on any but the most recent one. I understand the parts problem. But these are typically active parts like power transistors or ICs. I suspect MOST receiver problems are caused by bad caps. This has been a problem for ages. I once fixed a tube radio, had a magic eye tuning meter. Bad cap.
I have the service manual. I have mainly had DC DC box go bad ...capacitors..
I did notice someone on ebay seems to be selling caps to re cap the whole radio.
RFI-EMI-GUY
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If I recall correctly ICOM had a bulletin for this problem. The capacitors in the power supply get weak. AC ripple appears on the circuits. The RF stage tuning uses varactors. The ripple sweeps the tuning all over the place. The power supply should probably be recapped before you start troubleshooting elsewhere. Note if you unplug the DC jumper at the rear, the power supply will climb to 19 volts perhaps more. This is "normal" and is due to a bootstrap resistor across the series regulator. DO NOT plug the jumper back in until you have powered the AC off and allowed the capacitors to bleed down. You will blow the grain of wheat lamps in the front panel and perhaps damage other stuff.
The receiver instruction manual should advise you on normal settings for the front controls. Having RF gain turned down, a wrong IF filter setting, or squelch turned too high can reduce receiver gain.
Here is a good video (below) on the innards of this radio. I would recap the power supply including DC DC convertors (which bias varactors and power VFD display) before troubleshooting. Then troubleshoot and replace specific parts to restore sensitivity before recapping. Resist temptation to "tune" the radio without a better understanding of its condition. It is a radio that will always demand a good price when working properly.
The difference is that older radios used common components that you can still buy today. Radios from the 1980s started using specialized solid-state devices, particularly digital devices, that are no longer available and that nobody has duplicated. Go to a hamfest and you are bound to find someone selling boxes and boxes of old vacuum tubes. But, guys selling old ICs are rare.
Also remember that in the vacuum tube days radios were intended to be serviced and repaired while newer ones were not. While Icom (as well as Kenwood, Yaesu etc.) are serviceable to a point, that level is nowhere near to that as in the past.
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Before we get too nostalgic it might be good to consider that that was design out of necessity; those radios required regular servicing (unlike my R7000, which worked flawlessly for ~25 years without any maintenance whatsoever).
You betcha! No tubes to be replaced like my old Hallicrafters and Zeniths had! As for alignment it was at least 15 years old before my first R7000 alignment, it worked OK before then but was not as sensitive as some of my scanners of the time (PRO2004/5 vintage) so the volt-meter portion of the alignment worked well.
Over the years I have had a few R7000's, at least 3 or 4 (One might have been mine before...) as well as a couple R71's and some R8500's. The first one I played with was a friends' R7000, he had had it for at least 5 years when I first became aware of it and probably still has it today. My first one was 10 years old when I got it and worked fine 5 years later when I sent it to EEB for an upgrade, the only issue I had was one of the dial lights (for the meter) went out.
I had a similar experience with the R8500's, they worked fine with no service for years with the exception of the dial lights. I never had to re-cap any of these but I suspect if I still had some of them I would have by now. I probably would have had to have the PS worked on on some of these as well.
Yes I have another R7000 that is still very sensitive. Bought it new in the 1980s. I wish this one I bought used had same sensitivity. It affects scanning searching everything. Again thankfully I can return it next week for a full refund. It has a discriminator output, I wonder if this is how the noise creeps in? Especially if not buffered.
Search for a good R7100. I had one in the 90s and it is very good in VHF and UHF bands.
Not sure about the actual prices but I believe that $400 would be enough (maybe less).
