TK-880 Troubles

[kenwoodgeek]

Alright, well I didn't buy that broken TK-880H since the seller never responded to my offer, so I began my search for another 880. I came across one for $80 which was on sale for $53. According to the ad, it was untested. I bumped the seller down to $45, which was still more than I wanted to pay.

Upon receiving the unit a little while ago, I powered it up and began testing. Everything works flawlessly on it, with exception to the speaker, which sounds to be completely dead. No fuzz or white noise out of it, and no key press beeps when I raise the volume. I plugged headphones into the external speaker jack, put it on low volume, and determined that the jack is good and that the received audio sounds great. So it's just the speaker that will need to be checked out.

However, at the same time, this unit has a third cable coming out of it. I had noticed this cable in the eBay pictures, but I didn't see it was actually attached to the radio. The cord comes straight out under the power wire and goes to a connector, which then ends at an Ethernet plug. I assume it was for GPS or something else at one point, but does anyone know if the speaker not working has anything at all to do with this cable? I doubt it, but I figured I would ask anyway.

Does anyone know what this cable is for? Can it be removed? How difficult will replacing the speaker be, assuming that's what it needs?

Pictures below. Thanks!

 

[FARMER522]

Take the two screws off the top and remove the cover and look inside and see if the speaker is unplugged. Might be a yellow wire plugged into the speaker socket, if so unplug it and plug the internal speaker back up. If you want to remove the wiring harness, just unplug from each socket that they are plugged into.

 

[mmckenna]

That would be the KCT-19 accessory cable. It basically remotes a lot of the useful connections to the outside of the radio.
No idea what the RJ-45 was for, could be for a tone remote setup (remote control of the radio) in a base setup. Looks like a pre-made cable, not something someone hacked together, so likely it came with whatever it was used for.

As for the KCT-19, here's what's on the pins:

Pin 1- External mic hook input or system busy output based on jumpers.
Pin 2- Mic Ground or Speaker audio mute based on jumpers.
Pin 3- Ignition Sense input
Pin 4- Receiver Detector output
Pin 5- External Mic input or Transmitter Sense out based on jumpers
Pin 6- Ground
Pin 7- Switched battery + (13.6 volts, 0.75A max)
Pin 8- External PTT
Pin 9- Data Modulation Input
Pin 10- Horn alert
Pin 11- Squelch Detect output
Pin 12- Speaker Audio output
Pin 13- Link Complete pulse output or Speaker mute input based on jumpers
Pin 14- Serial Control data input or Mic Mute input
Pin 15- Serial Control data output or
Data Control channel signal input or
Link complete pulse output or
Transmitter Sense output or
Foot Switch input
(all dependent on jumpers)

So, it's likely they had an external speaker (KES-4) stuck down on top of the radio where all that double sided tape residue is. I'm thinking if you connected a speaker to pins 12 and pin 6, you'd get audio out of it.

If you don't want to use this, you can open up the radio, disconnect the connector from the KCT-19 that goes to CN5 on the board and reconnect the wire that's coming from the speaker. That should restore things.

Glad to hear it's working well. Good score!

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Thank you very much, guys. Man, that was easy. I took out the accessory cable altogether and plugged the speaker back in. Working great now. Cleaned off all the adhesive, too, so it looks a lot better.

Up and running here! I suppose $45 for thing wasn't bad.

 

[mmckenna]

Not bad at all. Glad it was an easy fix.

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Also, does anyone know if the LCD contrast can be adjusted on this thing? The characters on this one are not very sharp at all.

 

[mmckenna]

I didn't see anything in the service manual.

I'd check in the "Test Mode" portion of the programming software and see if it's there (although the manual didn't say it was). That's where it is in the newer radios.

If it isn't there, you may have to open the radio up and take a look around the display area and see if any adjustments are labeled as such.