I have recently bought a non working Sansui CP-7 component system. It's the digital tuner version. How rare are these? I've never seen one before. It powers up but no sound the digital display is unreadable. The cassette seems to be stuck in play mode as the heads are raised and won't go down. Its in great physical condition and needs a clean. Is this worth spending some money on? I paid a ridiculous £3 for it. Any ideas? Thanks.
I love Sansui, some of their later stuff is marginal but the CP-7 seems like a keeper. Extremely rare but that doesn't mean valuable and that might be because it is rare and under the radar for most people. Personally I love the small square buttons and the big clip in handle, the torquise blue trim is a nice touch. I've been looking for one for years or it's little brother but I've seen maybe 3 or 4 in the past 10 years and they were roached out or incomplete. I'm not sure how the play mechanism works but sometimes opening it up and cleaning up the small hairs and sticky grease solves the problems. Take some photos if you do get it apart and maybe some members can spot the issues. Try using headphones and see if your getting any sound. Best case with the display is a loose wire, open up the case and check the wiring to see if any have come loose and the display "flickers" back to life. I have very few boxes with digital and little experience working on them, mine usually are cracked and will never work.
Thanks for that, I agree it looks the part especially the blue trim. I'm not that confident when it comes to repairs. I have a chap who lives locally, this is why I'm asking about spending money on it. What do you think its value is, fully working? The digital display has some broken up figures but I can't see any cracks or damage. Regarding the small square buttons, do they physically click or are they touch sensitive because they don't seem to move. I have a feeling it just needs a really good clean. I'll try and add some pictures.
There's probably not much you can do about the digital display except replace it.....but unfortunately you won't be able to find the part. As for the power up issue, could be a bad power switch, could be a bad transformer, could be bad speaker connections, could be a bad amp, who knows.
If the LCD is missing digits but is not broken it might be repaired with cleaning the pcb and the zebra stripes (if it has those) that connects the display to the electronics that controls it.
Agreed. Bad connections will usually cause some segments to be very feint and others fine. If it has a flexi PCB welded to one side of the LCD I have repaired one of those in a calculator by running the edge of a warm iron over the connections, The two non fixable ones are if the glass is cracked or the liquid has leaked out through the joins at the side. I would love to know if there is any way of getting Liquid Crystal back in as I have a really nice Sharp alphanumeric calculator on which over the years the LCD has gone black around the edges, meaning the liquid has leaked out. If you can't see any of these symptoms there is always a chance that the problem is elsewhere, like in the power connection to the display driver.
There's guys out there repairing some of these old boards but I think it's harder than it looks, if you can save one your doing great. https://www.instructables.com/id/Repair-a-Malfunctioning-LCD/
