It's Back!

I really struggled with a title for this post. I thought about Forget Everything I've Said Previously: Vintage Audio SUCKS, Geeking Out, and Done With It, but now that I've calmed down I settled on what you see above.

[Warning: Heavy stereo geek rambling ahead. Proceed at your own risk!]

As you probably don't remember, last May I put a bid in—and won—a vintage Kenwood KR-7400 stereo receiver. After receiving it and assessing the condition, I dutifully delivered it to my service guy in Prescott and we discussed what I wanted done. In addition to all the usual stuff (replacing capacitors and other out-of-spec components and generally getting it running) I also obviously wanted him to replace the dial bulbs since half of them were burnt out. I didn't want his usual LED upgrade as I'd attempted that on my previous KR-7400 and I didn't like the results (too many visual hot spots), but rather he replace them with more incandescent bulbs.

I heard from him in November when he started work on the unit. He told me that the type of bulbs used in the 7400 weren't being made any more, but he could hand-solder leads onto the nearest type of bulb which would work both electrically and physically in the unit. I told him to go ahead, having every confidence that this would produce the desired results.

I picked up the finished unit about ten days ago. It looked and worked great in his shop, but by the time I got it home, something had come lose, and one of these custom bulbs wasn't working. A cursory glance told me that it had actually burnt out. I wasn't a happy boy was pissed!

Changing out these bulbs isn't a simple matter; Kenwood soldered everything into place (sound like any other recent—cough, cough, Apple—company?) so it wouldn't just be a matter of popping another one in a socket. I told Randy about the bulb and he said that one of the solder joints had probably come loose and shorted while transporting it back home. I told him that I probably should've listened to him and gone the LED route initially, but if I was going to have to drive it all the way back up to Prescott for him to fix, I'd like to go ahead and use LEDs since the original bulbs weren't available any longer. He said he didn't know if he had the necessary type in stock, so I said I'd go on eBay and see if I could find an LED kit that met with his approval and deliver it to him along with the receiver.

I found a kit, asked him if it would be what he needed, and ordered it.

Then, late last week, while going through stuff in preparation for our move next month, I happened across a complete set of original dial bulbs that I'd bought for my previous 7400 back in 2016. I didn't use them because I ended up going with LEDs at the time.

Taking this as a sign from the gods, I got in touch with Randy and told him what I'd found and said I'd attempt the repair myself; that I'd done this type of thing on this model in the past and didn't blow anything up, so…fingers crossed!

While the LED kit arrived last week, I decided to stick with the incandescent bulbs, and undertook the project this afternoon. I swapped out the one burnt out bulb, but it was dimmer than Randy's replacements, so I ended up swapping them all out. It was white-knuckle stuff at times, because I am not good with a soldering iron, but they're all replaced and the dial now has a nice, uniform brightness across the entire length.

Why go to so much trouble for what are essentially running lights? One of the things I always liked about the illumination on this unit was how it seemed to change color; during the day it had a decidedly blue-green tinge, but at night it was very obviously blue.

I've been spinning vinyl since I got it all buttoned up this afternoon, and I'm absolutely blown away by how it sounds. I remember now why I kept this particular model for so many years, and once proclaimed it as being "the last vintage receiver I'll ever want or need." My previous 7400 sounded good with the Infinity loudspeakers I had since graduating high school, but this one absolutely sings with my JBL L166s.