TS-830S BandSwitch Repair

The aging bandswitch assembly located on the RF board in the 830s can cause a variety of ill’s. Among them are intermittent, low, or no transmit on some bands, weak receive on some or all bands, and mine does not seem to drift near as bad as before but not sure about this.

The culprit seems to be the small rivets (up to 12 on each bandswitch wafer) on the 7 wafers where the contacts are located. These rivets hold the fixed contacts to the wafer and the through board connection. Over time they loose connection through chemical action of dissimiliar metals.

One way to verify the bandswitch as a possible problem is to gentle press on the wafers as your weak receive, etc is occuring. Do this with an INSULATED tool. If the anomaly changes then its likely the bandswitch.

One fix on the net involves injecting these with conductive paint. I will not get into that repair here since I have not tried it. Some obviously claim it works while others claim it did not accomplish a permanent fix.

This repair involves “bypassing” the rivets. This is accomplish by soldering the unused terminal lugs to the copper traces on the wafers. More on this later.

Notes:

Most of the problems with the bandswitch seem to be with the section on the RF board.Fortunately it appears the switch section inside the tube cage is somewhat more sturdy. It has not give me any problems therefore I did not rebuild it.

Please forgive my use of non standard wording in this article. With time I may update this piece.

Cautions:

· This is a repair that is not for a novice at electronic repair. I have been around a soldering iron, multimeters, and scopes for 30+ years. Therefore I felt comfortable doing.

· You can be hurt inside a unit like this. Follow all Safety rules.

· The risk to damage your rig further is fairly high. The 20+ year old components are rather fragile and many are no longer available. If they are available they are fairly expensive.

· My effort here with this webpage is to give you tips from my experience. IT IS NOT a step by step instruction. You must be able to use your experience to get you through this. Again its not for a beginning repair tech. Although not much electronics involved, the mechanical aspects can be quite tedious

· If you feel uncomfortable doing this repair for any reason, DONT DO IT !

· Make many notes, diagrams, digital pictures of your own during this process.

· Many tools are necessary. A good pair of medical seizures is handy. I use the Soldapullt desoldering tool.

· Please weigh all these facts before proceeding. You might be better off with the rig as is.

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