Jim Cleary Posted June 23, 2015 Posted June 23, 2015 Saw an interesting receiver on a well known auction site the other day.It was an AMC brand.Nice and cheap but the catch was the radio was not working.The seller tells me the radio is not working as it is set to USA frequencies.I always though tuners were the same the world over.I asked the guy about this and he confirmed that this was right.Would this be right.. I have an AMC cd player which I really like but it won't play the last couple of tracks of cd's.
Green Wagon Posted June 23, 2015 Posted June 23, 2015 (edited) Tuners are NOT the same globally. Australia uses 9KHz spacing for AM And 0.1MHz spacing for FM. USA uses 10KHz spacing for AM and 0.5MHz spacing for FM. (EDIT, Pretty sure I've got the FM spacing wrong - Doesn't matter, USA FM radios will still work here just fine) What this means for you is, the AM will be useless, while the FM will be perfectly fine and usable. FYI - The head unit in my car is a US import. AM useless, FM just fine. Japan tuners have a different spread on their FM, so their FM tuners will work here, BUT, you probably won't be able to get all stations without a 'band shifter' (Ebay, cheap) Some tuners have internal switches or solder bridges that can be changed to set it to other countries frequencies. Your CD played is most likely the laser loosing output thus unable to track properly. It might be possible to retune the adjustments to help, but it's more likely time for a new laser. That is if one is available..... Edited June 23, 2015 by Green Wagon 1
Guest Posted June 23, 2015 Posted June 23, 2015 A CD player that doesn't play to the end of CDs may also indicate that the sled that moves the laser lens is sticking. This can be caused by dried out grease or a mechanical issue with flyleads becoming stiff or fouling, or even a flat spot in the tracking/sled motor. The other issue is that as the CD starts from the centre and reads outwards, the run-out of the disc tends to increase towards the end, making it harder for an old, worn laser to follow the track. This kind of issue will be disc variable, depending on the eccentricity and flatness of a particular disc, whereas the first fault will affect all discs equally. You may have a combination of the two, of course.
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