Recently, a friend of mine asked if I would clean up “some Kenwood receivers” he found at his Dad’s house. He said none of them were working properly and he thought a good cleaning might do the trick. I agreed to try.
I was surprised when they arrived with the units to see three Kenwoods, comprising of one KR-4600 and two KR-5600s. One of the 5600s looked in pretty good shape and was fairly easy to clean, but the 4600 and the other 5600 were a real challenge.
The issue I was having was losing sound while using the phono input. I had cleaned the volume pot on each and had zero issues while listening to the radio or aux inputs. In fact, each of these units have two phono inputs, and often Phono 2 would play fine, but on each unit, Phono 1 was still giving me problems.
It’s worth noting that last year I bought a Kenwood KR-5600 of my own off Facebook Marketplace. The owner said it played great and of course I got it home and the phono input started giving me trouble, losing sound in one channel. I took the top cover off the unit and sprayed all the pots I could see, but couldn’t get it working again. I set it aside to deal with later.
While working on my friend’s units, I noticed that the sound was most impacted when I moved the Tape Monitor and Input Selector switches, both located on the right side of the unit. I also noticed you cannot spray DeOxit into the pots at the front of the unit as there are long rods extending to the back of the unit where the pots are actually located.
I looked up the manual online and found where you can unscrew the rear of the unit and slightly peel back the preamp board (I couldn’t get it fully removed, too many screws) where you will see the pots located on the bottom of the board to spray in Deoxit.
See below screen shot of manual explaining how to access the preamp.
Note, the long rods connecting the pots to the knobs on the front of the unit will separate from the pots when you peel back the preamp board. Reinsert those properly and then turn the knobs several times to work the DeOxit in and let it do its magic.
This worked for all of the Kenwoods, including the 5600 I bought last year.
I knew I’d probably never have that many Kenwoods around again so I snapped the above photo with them stacked on each other.
If you have a Kenwood giving you trouble, trying this cleaning technique before giving up on it completely!
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