Henry Kloss Radio

I use an 88CD radio in the kitchen. Recently the "spring" for the cd lid broke, so now it's a little tricky opening it. Also, years ago the display panel dimmed permanently so it's hard to read. Still sounds good though. My daughter has one that is still going strong.

 

I think everyone is so fond of our Model88 Radios that they are like our wounded ducks and we just want to save them.

 

Did they ever put out a service manual or schematics?

 

Nope - as far as I know there was never distributed service information for any of the CSW products through the time when it was US owned. Not even in-house in my time - we had schematics and documented test procedures, of course, but never any kind of organized book and mostly what one needed to know to work on things was passed by folklore.

 

When I worked as a tech we all had our own "book of knowledge" we would xerox test prods and schematics and manual excerpts into. Perhaps someone has kept theirs and it might circulate somewhere....it happens... I doubt CSW would get too upset over an obsolete product.

 

Well, I am going to split hairs here. Antiquated, yes. Obsolete, not yet. Every day Bose is selling their Wave Radios on QVC and I still will rather have my Model 88CD Radio. I just want my CD player to work. Please. Anyone?

 

I have an 88 hooked up to my main system and absolutley love it; for a long time a few years ago, it was left on for the most part continuously. Knock on wood, she still goes strong; great radio. While nothing to compare it to, It sounds wonderful I think. I had bought it, maybe 12-15 yrs ago (?) as a B stock for around $100. I've definitely got my money worth and then some, out of it.

 

You might trying cleaning the lens. If you have a cleaning disc, run that. If not hit it with some compressed air. As to the buttons, contact cleaner might work, but I haven't tried taking my apart to get to them - but what do you have to lose?

 

My Dad and I both have Model 88's, no CD. He's had his for about 10 years, and bought me mine lightly used off eBay about 4 years ago. It's a real shame they stopped making these. They are the best table radios I've ever heard.

 

I was responsible, by aggressive recommendation, for about 25 of the Kloss Model 88 and 88CD's being purchased by family and friends when they were new. The experience now more than 15 years years on is that all of the radios still work but the keypads on the radio itself fail and the remote handset becomes the only way to operate it. The CD transports on almost all of the units failed in a few years. When that started to happen ,I bought up a bunch of Sony 20 buck CD portables at Target to give to all of them to use as the CD transports failed. Thinking about doing any work on these is a huge waste of time as there is no "drop-in" replacement for the CD transport and the keypad is pretty much unrepairable and certainly not replaceable in 2012.
Still a great sounding radio (I've still got and use 4) and IMO the best sounding tabletop audio product ever made. I thought the replacement products Cambridge made were a huge step down on every level.

 

About 90% sure it is the aluminum electrolytic capacitors. My unit starting acting flaky (wouldn't turn on, clock went haywire, etc). The failure was intermediate. I did a wholesale replacement on the aluminum electrolytic capacitors and it works like a champ. Coincidentally, my LCD TV of about the same age failed at about the same time and for the same reason. These capacitors have a finite life and will often fail after about 10 years.

If you are not versed in electronics repair, you'll need to find someone who has the tools and skills to do the work. The circuit board uses a ground plane which is very difficult to solder and requires either an under-board heater or hot air rework gun to preheat the plane. If you (or someone you know) is well versed, then this is how you do the repairs:

Remove the four screws on the back of the unit. Gently remove the back cover. The circuit board attaches to the cover you're removing and there are a number of connectors you'll need to disconnect between the board and main unit.

There are probably 6 screws that hold the circuit board, two that hold the aux board (base control, aux input) and one that holds the power cord retainer. Leave the aux board attached to the main board. Remove all of these. You'll also need to desolder the AM antenna wire. This is a short, black wire that connects between the circuit board and copper shielding on the cover. It solders into a ground plane, so it can be difficult to reflow the solder. Look for the round capacitors with a polarity marking. These are the ones you want to replace. Write down the voltage and capacitance for each aluminum electrolytic cap. Measure the lead spacing (critical) and case size (less critical). I used Digikey and matched the lead spacing, voltage, capacitance exactly. I matched the case size to the closest size available and got the lowest ESR value available. The lower the ESR the more effective the capacitor can move charge into and out of the capacitor (improving its effectiveness).

There is a black heat sink that wraps around the board. If you remove the heat sink, make sure you note which regulator has a plastic bushing on the screw. This regulator has a positive voltage on its case and you will short the regulator without the bushing (it also has an insulating pad that sits between the heat sink and the regulator case).

When replacing the capacitors, you'll need to pre-heat the ground plane in immediate area of the capacitor you're desoldering (or soldering). You can use an under-board heater, but if you set the temperature too high the bottom mounted components can fall off. I used a hot air solder station and heated the plane. While the plane was hot, I used my solder station and desoldered the parts. I did the same (hot air then solder gun) to install the new parts.

Unfortunately I didn't document my repairs that well (sorry, no photos). I did install the regulator bushing on the wrong regulator (hence my warning above). It took me several attempts to figure out what I had done wrong.

Good luck,
Kevin H.
Augusta, GA

 

Do they not provide any help at all anymore on the Model 88 Radio? Mine is having difficulty with the headphone jack (it's loose), and I cannot see how to access it for a repair. Removing the back isn't the answer. I've twice this year sent messages to Cambridge via their online support request system just to find out how to get to this part, but have never received so much as an acknoledgement of my request, let alone an answer. While it IS an old radio, that's pretty lousy customer support.

 

Someone upthread was told by the current CSW that the product is no longer supported. In Henry's day that probably wouldn't be the case, but he sold the company in 1997. Serviceability was never a prime goal in any of the stuff like the 88 they had manufactured in China. One suggestion that I don't think has been made in this thread is to try calling Tivoli and see if they know anyone who might work on your set, but I wouldn't hold out much hope. In your shoes, I would try to find a short extension (male->female) 1/8" stereo cord, find a way to secure it where both channels work at the radio end and use the new female end for day to day connections. I say this as someone who for the past three or four years has had a connector cut from the end of a Cat-5 cable wedged in place under the input jack to solve a similar problem on my original Soundworks 2.1 system for my computer. And I opened and repaired probably a hundred or more Soundworks systems with this exact problem back in the day, but it's a royal PITA to do so, and that piece is a lot easier to get into than the radio. Having known and worked directly with him for some time, I feel confident in saying this would be a Henry-approved solution.

 

I have the Model 88 w/o CD player. It was unused for about 15 years. I just plugged it in and it will play the radio for about 2 seconds then go quiet although the display is still active. If I press the "CD" (for an external CD player), the station it is set to plays another 1-2 seconds. Any button pushing creates a "thunk" noise from the speakers. The volume buttons raise or lower the volume number (with accompanying "thunk") but the volume is unaffected.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? This forum and other stuff I have read are not encouraging.

My daughter wants a set of speakers for her Ipod but I was hoping I could do better for her by running the Ipod into this through the AUX of the model 88.

 

Sentiment for the model 88 CD appear to be so generally positive that report of a recent experience might be of use to others with an interest in this discussion.

Our +/- twenty-year-old unit went dead shortly after appearing to have survived the 2nd of two cross-county moves. The display had become illegible some years prior. Sensing no satisfaction in the Boston area Yellow Pages and after sniffing around the web I took the chance of contacting "OontZ By Cambridge Soundworks." Their reply was immediate: no guarantee was made, but for $85, plus my outbound shipping, I purchased return authorization for a technical inspection and an unspecified level of repair service, return shipping included. Turnaround time was estimated at about 4 - 7 weeks.

As it played out, elapsed time - inquiry to return - proved to be about 17 days. My total cost came to roughly $120 with packing by Fedex, outbound shipping and insurance.

We can't predict how many years we will enjoy together again, but with full functionality and display completely restored we are so far entirely satisfied with all aspects of this transaction.