Sony SLV-N50 broken audio?

[WC74]

I have a Sony SLV-N50.

Recently, the audio stopped working.

It does not passthrough audio, it does not play audio from any tapes, it doesn't record the input audio - it just records quiet noise.

I cannot record, passthrough or listen to audio through rca and rf connections.

Video works though.

Is there a way I can fix it?

[hodgey]

It's kind of hard to tell, since there is no audio anywhere I would maybe suspect it would be something near the hi-fi chip (or the chip itself) since all of the audio goes via that. Does the deck recognize if there is hi-fi audio on a tape (either via on-screen display or front display, don't remember) even if not outputting it?

It might be difficult to trace where the fault would be unless it's something obvious like a blown component though. The vcrs internals were quite minimized at this point and most stuff is done inside a few chips, plus everything other than the power supply and tuner is on one circuit board that sits under the mechanism so stuff is hard to get to without disassembly.

These Sonys aren't too bad, but they're not extremely valuable either (ebay has these and related seem to go for like $50-$70. So, depends how much effort you want to put into it and whether you have experience with repair and diagnosis of electronics vs looking for a new one.

[RobustReviews]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgey

It's kind of hard to tell, since there is no audio anywhere I would maybe suspect it would be something near the hi-fi chip (or the chip itself) since all of the audio goes via that. Does the deck recognize if there is hi-fi audio on a tape (either via on-screen display or front display, don't remember) even if not outputting it?

It might be difficult to trace where the fault would be unless it's something obvious like a blown component though. The vcrs internals were quite minimized at this point and most stuff is done inside a few chips, plus everything other than the power supply and tuner is on one circuit board that sits under the mechanism so stuff is hard to get to without disassembly.

These Sonys aren't too bad, but they're not extremely valuable either (ebay has these and related seem to go for like $50-$70. So, depends how much effort you want to put into it and whether you have experience with repair and diagnosis of electronics vs looking for a new one.

As said, unless it's something clearly obvious it's bin fodder.

I like Sony machines and my view is that they can get a bad wrap, there's some crap at the end but their high end 90s decks are bargains, they have a common mechanical fault which is a faff to fix (the famous 'blue gear') which requires the whole machine to be stripped and retimed but once that's fixed they play back very nicely. True Sony machines are usually the most logical in construction and usually very well documented, in my opinion anyway.

Your model though, I think that's one of the not-so-good later decks though when Sony has lost interest and was letting all sorts of second-tier companies produce the transports.