I bought this Sherwood S-7200 receiver while traveling to visit family over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was listed on Facebook market for just $40 because it had a weak left channel. I sent the buyer a note while we were shopping at the local mall and it turned out he lived 5 minutes away so he brought it over to me while the family finished shopping. I snapped this photo in the parking lot after purchasing.
I’ve repaired three of these Sherwood receivers now, all with weak sound output from either the left or right channel and have found a common repair among all three.
First, it’s common for weak sound from a channel in vintage receivers to be repaired by a good Deoxit cleaning on the volume or balance pots. However, in these Sherwood models such as the 7100 and the 7200, you do NOT want to spray Deoxit into the volume pot as it also acts as the power switch. This switch contains plastic which Deoxit will corrode causing the switch to break and be completely inoperable. This is a very common issue with this line of receivers. Instead, shoot a little bit of Faderlube in there to clean.
But even with a cleaning of the pots, you will most likely still have a weak channel. Here is how I repaired…
In short, there are eight 4.7uf/25v capacitors that need to be replaced on the tone board. One of the caps is an axial lead but there’s enough room to plug in a radial cap. The below photo shows the new caps in place. I’ll include another photo with all of them circled as well. The service manual has them listed as 901a, 901b, 902b, 903a, 903b, 904a, 904b with the axial cap listed as 902a.
In the most recent model I repaired, the left channel was weak. Replacing these caps brought both channels back to life. In all three repairs, simply recapping this board fixed the issue.
It’s worth mentioning the solder pads on this board are very close to each other. Be sure to note which pads should not have solder flowed between them, especially when installing the new caps. I accidentally soldered one of the capacitors negative and positive pads together which caused the right channel to then disappear. Not good. Going back over the board, I found the mistake and cleaned it up and now it plays great. So be sure to take your time and be as clean as possible when installing the new components.
One more thing, further research online shows that the old Sanyo transistors on this tone board can eventually cause a loud hiss. Since this tone board isn’t fun to get access to, I went ahead and replaced those transistors with KSC1845s. The photo below shows the new transistors circled in red.
The hardest part of this repair is accessing the tone board. I had to unscrew the bracket holding the two big filter caps to provide for enough spacing to pull the board out and access. Be careful when you’re moving the board and take a lot of photos as it’s common for a little connection wire to break loose somewhere on the board which will cause sound to disappear completely.
I love these little Sherwood receivers and their sound. A lot of people swear by them and enjoy the warm, tube-like sound they provide.
If you find one in the wild that’s priced cheap due to a weak channel, consider picking it up!
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