2. home-theater
  3. 186791-4854

21 year old AV receiver - waiting for the end?

Since 2002 my Rotel RSX-1055 has been on almost every single day. It has never failed in well over 20,000 hours of running - maybe 30,000. My $1200 investment has worked out well (However, had I put this in Apple stock, it would be about 150k). I know that capacitors can dry out over time, so I looked into some preventive maintenance. Rotel’s answer was it’s not supported, they don’t have parts, and a local shop who does a lot of work on old amps, mostly tube stuff, says they don’t work on AV receivers. I doubt I can find anyone to do this. So my question is, what will the end look like? Is it likely to fade out one day? Will there be a faint sizzle sound, or smell of electronics frying? Or will I wake up one morning to find it has passed quietly in the night? How long could this thing last? I don’t want to give up on it.

karavite

Showing 2 responses by erik_squires

erik_squires
15,791 posts
 

Thanks. I'm probably not going to put effort or money into it, but I can't help anthropomorphize it a bit - it has been faithful member of the household for two decades.

Give it another 10 years. :)

erik_squires
15,791 posts
 

Kind of depends, but caps going out can cause a cascade of failures. Of all the parts in your receiver, the caps are the easiest to find appropriate replacements for. It’s anything made out of silicon which can fail and have no replacement for. Transistors, CPUs, movie sound processing, etc.

Transistors are kind of iffy, depending on the parts originally used, they can go out of manufacture and have no reasonable replacement.

IMHO, having the unit recapped is a reasonable effort and will probably save you problems down the road. I think reaching out to a shop and being clear that you just want the power caps replaced should get you further along. Modern caps are smaller, longer lived and higher temp (longer endurance). Finding appropriate replacements even for 40 year old gear solid state gear should be reasonably easy.

Looking at a picture of the insides, the power supply layout is pretty traditional. 4 large caps right next to the large power transformer.  These would be easy to replace.

Another thing to consider is that caps made in the 21st century are a lot better than made in the 1980s. You may have more life in them than you’d have thought otherwise.

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