Living with Vintage Items

Our beloved Carver Receiver is being repaired

Vintage HiFi for Music Lovers

We own two Carver receivers that we’ve used for over 30 years to play music from CDs and vinyl records. Both are proud mem­bers of a dis­ap­pear­ing breed of hifi com­po­nents designed and man­u­fac­tured in the US, and aimed at music lovers. They’ve become col­lec­tors items, prized by peo­ple who still own CD/DVD play­ers and turnta­bles for vinyl records.

Carver receivers appeal to audio­philes who appre­ci­ate high qual­ity music with sig­nif­i­cant detail and def­i­n­i­tion dur­ing play­back. There’s a warm spa­cious­ness to their sound that few of today’s dig­i­tal devices and com­pressed codecs can equal.

Although we also own dig­i­tal com­po­nents with today’s stan­dard HDMI, USB and coax inter­con­nec­tions, includ­ing WiFi access, we far pre­fer the sound pro­duced by this Carver Receiver.

That said, these vin­tage devices are com­pat­i­ble only with audio devices that include legacy input and out­put con­nec­tors — no HDMI con­nec­tors on board.

Built to Last

Our Carver receivers were built to last. They weigh more than 30 pounds. Their build qual­ity reflects tra­di­tional prin­ci­ples that no longer drive con­sumer brands: the notion that con­sumer devices should be designed for long life­times and ease of ser­vic­ing.

This is a stark con­trast to today’s real­ity, where brand name devices are designed for early obso­les­cence. All too many 21st cen­tury devices break just days or weeks after the war­ranty expires, and end up in a land­fill not long after.

Unlike today’s con­sumer elec­tron­ics you can still buy spare parts on eBay for our receiver, 33 years after it was man­u­fac­tured. Long after the Carver brand went out of busi­ness, as a sad con­se­quence of US labor costs that could no longer com­pete against cheap off­shore labor.

Thanks to the Carver’s core design, if you know how to use a sol­der­ing iron and have the skills to work with cir­cuit boards and ana­log parts, you can fix the Carver’s typ­i­cal fail­ure points (the out­put relays) in about 30 min­utes. Sadly, my hus­band and I lack the skills and the know-how to do this.

Preparing for a Tune-up

The design flaw of this receiver is the way its out­put relays fail after 10,000 hours of use, prob­a­bly due to heat-related chal­lenges. We’ve learned that our receiver needs a tune-up about once a decade, when its out­put relays even­tu­ally fail. It was over­due…

Our Carver stopped work­ing last year, so I’ve been on a 6-month quest to get it repaired. I bought replace­ment parts on eBay for about $30, and down­loaded a copy of the ser­vice man­ual writ­ten for repair tech­ni­cians.

Then I had to solve the real chal­lenge of obso­les­cence, find­ing some­one who knows how to use a sol­der­ing iron, under­stands schematic dia­grams, and can put those skills to use to repair a vin­tage ana­log device. These are fast dis­ap­pear­ing skills…

Vintage Items, Specialized Skills

Get­ting ready to sol­der the replace­ment parts in place

I’m not the only one look­ing for prac­ti­cal repair options for vin­tage gear. For­tu­nately, I live in a place where eco-minded peo­ple are exper­i­ment­ing with options to help us all keep stuff out of the land­fills.

For exam­ple King County’s Eco­Con­sumer group is on a mis­sion to help peo­ple repair bro­ken house­hold items, includ­ing torn cloth­ing and bed­ding mate­ri­als. They’re exper­i­ment­ing with com­mu­nity-based solu­tions.

They’ve begun host­ing Repair Café events. They line up vol­un­teer “fix­ers” will­ing to take a stab at repair­ing house­hold items that local com­mu­nity mem­bers will bring to those events.

The event hosts try to match on-site repair spe­cial­ists with the items need­ing their atten­tion. Besides man­ag­ing atten­dees’ expec­ta­tions about what’s fea­si­ble, the event host declines items that are out­side the skills or scope that the day’s vol­un­teer fix­ers are will­ing to tackle.

King County Repair Café event, Octo­ber 2017

Luck­ily for me, last weekend’s Repair Café included two spe­cial­ists who know how to repair a broad range of con­sumer elec­tron­ics, includ­ing vin­tage receivers like mine. They’d brought the right tools for the job includ­ing the sol­der and sol­der­ing iron.

That said, my Carver could not have been fixed if I hadn’t come pre­pared. Thanks to online research and advance plan­ning, I came equipped with the right spare parts. I also had a copy of the ser­vice man­ual on my iPad, so the tech­ni­cian could check the wiring dia­grams. These were the key resources my fixer needed so he could do his magic with the sol­der­ing iron.

Many Needs

Repair­ing gar­ments at the Repair Café

While I waited for the spe­cial­ist to repair my Carver, I looked around to see what other kinds of repairs were pop­u­lar. To my sur­prise the busiest “fix­ers” were the women oper­at­ing the sewing machines. They restored a num­ber of torn gar­ments, bro­ken zip­pers and dam­aged quilts.

I over­heard that a num­ber of the items await­ing repair had recently been pur­chased from thrift shops… A sewing machine had come from a pawn shop — indica­tive of how badly these events are needed by peo­ple strug­gling to make ends meet.

While I was there, the fix­ers repaired a weed whacker, sev­eral lamps, a Singer sewing machine, a juicer, a gar­den orna­ment made of stained glass, at least two music com­po­nents, and dozens of torn gar­ments. Plus my vin­tage Carver Receiver.

I couldn’t help but notice that most of the vol­un­teers pro­vid­ing repair ser­vices are well over 40 years old.  Their skills may be a dis­ap­pear­ing art…

The room was crowded through­out the event. There were always peo­ple wait­ing in line for the next avail­able fixer. Clearly, the Eco­Con­sumer group is on to some­thing that our com­mu­nity wants and needs. Atten­dees went home delighted.

I’m grate­ful to have found some­one at the Repair Café with the sol­der­ing skills my Carver needed. This made me happy all week­end.

My hus­band and I are thrilled to know our vin­tage Carver is now ready to keep work­ing for another 10,000 hours!