Sony Decks and Weak Tuners
 

I'm on my 4th Sony deck now and I'm noticing a trend. On all four decks they still function fine. CD's play, MD's work, the displays are excellent and the audio sounds fine. I'll run them for years with no problems with the radio but finally over half a year or so before I swap it out the sensitivity of the bands all slide off until I can be a few kilometers from the transmitter and it's just static. My satellite radio uses an FM injector and by that point it's the only thing the radio will pick up.
The only thing I can tell that relates them all is they were manufactured in the late 90's and early 2000's. Cap failure is something I suspect but does this sound like a familiar failure to anyone else?

IF the stations come in where they should but there is a loud
hiss look at the RF amp transistor (FET). They are static sensitive.
An open RF FET will still pass very strong signals. So will an old
TV with a bad RF amp tube .After that AGC is possible but very rare
in the olden days. Beyond that check any B+ sources for the
tuner & IF.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !