Hello Everyone, I have a Saba Freiburg 14 which has been in my family for as long as I can remember. All appears to function correctly except that the sound coming from one of the channel is muffled/distorted. I have tried to connect an external speaker to determine if the problem is with the actual radio or speakers. The problem is also there when connecting external speakers.

I know it's a shot in the dark but if anyone has some information (schematics) or any pointer as to which part/area of the radio is likely to be at fault to narrow things down, that would be much appreciated.

Thank you.
Marc

Hi Marc you can download the service manual for free here.

https://elektrotanya.com/saba_freiburg_14_breisgau_14_continental_sm.pdf/download.html

If the speakers on the left behave the same when fitted to the right, they are not the problem.

Clearly one amp has failed. Do not tamper with the working one, as circuit, or not it can be used to determine where the other one has failed.

Radio Museum has circuit. https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/saba_freiburg_vollautomatic_14.html

With the number of tubes it has it will help warm a room. ELL80 is possibly a push pull amplifier & if all, or one half of that has issues it will distort.

Being of sixties vintage it will likely need checking to see what sort of capacitors it has in it. If they are of the "Waxed paper" type most are failing or have by now.

Marc

Obviously two of us writing at the same time: If you are not familiar with German circuits, have a look at it and say to yourself "Why haven't we got circuit diagrams like that?"

Fixing would be a whole lot easier even with a massive animal like that.

Thank you so much Marc and Rudolf

Having one good amp & one bad is a luxury enhanced by the availability of a circuit. .

As it is working in some sort of ghastly fashion, my approach, as I have them, would be to feed a clean modulated tone into the front end, using a signal generator and then plod through the amp with an Oscilloscope to spot at which point the signal falls apart?

At this point, little time & no money has been spent on repairs.

Marc

[Comment deleted: Irrelevant]

Forgot: As there is a circuit and a working amp; voltage comparisons on the elements of the valves are very important.

I have finally decided to take the SABA to a repair shop. One thing that became obvious is that, according to the service manual, there are 2 sockets where the 'Stereo Decoder' and 'Test Socket' should be. These parts a simply not there on my unit . Would these missing parts be the cause of the my problem?

Thank you.
Marc

On AM, or if it has a turntable I would not see the need for a stereo decoder. So if its crook on both of them. I would be of the opinion that you have a crook amp.

To me, if that is an old Machine, It would only be FM that required a decoder.

Marc