Panasonic RX-5350

[dusty_bottoms]

I'm currently looking at a few larger at home boomboxes to play with and maintain, and the three that I'm between right now are the Panasonic 5500, the 5350, and the National 5700.

Luckily the 5350 has much more info on it than the other two I've listed, I've already looked through other forum posts and the wiki to find some common faults and what I can expect from it. I'd love to hear if there's anything else people can tell me. What are some common faults, what can I expect from buying it, what does the boombox expect of me to keep it running, etc. I'm hoping to find something nice that'll last a some years with care and attention, but I'm sure with all old electronics, they're bound to irreparably die at some point.

I'm pretty good with a solder, but I still generally favor simpler mechanical boxes, hence why I avoid boomboxes with soft touch or anything other features that'll end up confusing me when I open it up to fix something. Mo wires mo problems. I'm pretty good with a solder, but I'm not really equipped or skilled enough to do any electrical maintenance besides replacing components on the PCB, the less time I have to spend identifying which parts to replace the better.

I'm hoping to find a box that's big, nice, durable, and I can mostly maintain with my skills and hopefully only needing to send to a professional or replace the box in a few years. Hopefully a little longer if I go for the 5350 because compared to the others it's mighty expensive unless I buy one that's broke and fix it myself which can be a bit of a tossup.

 

[Superduper]

The RX-5350 is one of the more complicated units to service compared to some others. For example, some boomboxes like the JVC's of the era has most of the internals mounted on an internal chassis that can be removed from the cabinet, and all of the internal circuitry will remove along with the internal chassis. Many or even most Panasonics have the internal circuit boards mounted directly onto the cabinet, which makes servicing them a bit more complicated in my opinion. Also circuit wise, it's not the easiest to work on either. Idiosyncrasies are that the dolby chips frequently go out, the power switch is mounted on the circuit board and triggered by a sliding function switch. That switch fails often and will require some kind of fabrication with modern switches in order to repair, as you are unlikely to find a perfect replacement for that unique item. Also, the main circuit board employs an early form of double sided construction. While the bottom copper PCB traces are reliable, the upper side traces were printed out of a carbon material (not copper) and deteriorate easily. Furthermore, they went so far as to print resistors onto the board instead of using discrete resistors. Needless to say, over time, they can degrade and change value or even fail, especially if exposed to corrosion. Repair is possible but very tedious and a repair manual would absolutely be necessary to trace and rebuild the circuit. The RX-5350 has many variations and some variations (national, national-panasonic, etc) might be difficult if not impossible to find. I would say that the JVC RC-M90 might even be easier to service. If a more mechanical box is desired, the JVC RC-M70 is a very robust mechanical box that is quite durable.