I've had my McIntosh MR-77 tuner for more than a decade. One day last spring the one station I listen to suddenly became distorted. Tuning to any other station, the tuner still sounded normal, just the one station I like.
This station is at 89.1 MHz. They have a sister station at 90.5 MHz, which comes from the same studio and same transmitter tower. 90.5 still comes in just fine. And I can get 89.1 just fine in my car. So on the surface that seems to rule out broadcast problems.
I took the tuner to the local hifi repair place, which had a six week backlog. When I got it back, he said all he had to do was spray clean the tuner capacitor. It sounded fine for a few months. Then last Friday afternoon when I got home from work the problem returned.
I pulled off the cover and sprayed down the tuner capacitor with CRC Lectra Clean Heavy Duty Electrical Parts Degreaser. It got slightly better but it's not fixed.
So I'm wondering - what is the proper spray for cleaning an analog tuner capacitor? Should it be a lubricating cleaner? The only other spray I have to hand is Caig CaiLube MCL, but I'm reluctant to try it without an okay from the experts
Thanks for any suggestions.
And if it's not just a dirty tuner capacitor, what could cause a tuner to sound bad only on one station?
