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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:14 am

Funny thing about brands. I don't think they sell Marantz here in the states anymore. I have a 40 watt stereo with their name on it in the garage thats been playing in a really tough environment for going on thirty years. It has a nice wood case and I was told that I could keep it if I could fix it. I spray contact cleaner at the volume control every five years. Aiwa is the king of music in Japan, and they take their electronics seriously. In Japan Citizen watches get more respect than Seiko. I know in other countries its the other way around. I didn't mean to tee off on Bose, its just a funny story. I have some distant relatives that are both blind and they love their music. They could give a rats behind about what something looks like, can afford anything and they love the sound of their Wave and their black Bose nugget things with the hidden subwoofer. Personally, I now like mass marketed stuff because the engineering costs are distributed over a lot of units. I once went for stuff that cost more than cars. Now with kids and college to think about I like clones. Give any electronic device a year out in the market, if its any good it will be cloned and a bargain.

Back to the thread. I would not suggest any kind of Faraday shielding in the unit. You really do not want something catching fire because of something you did. A suggestion was to keep it turned down low. I would suggest a power strip with a rocker switch on it or a BSR X10 remote that would turn the power off the entire unit for safety.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

The chances are that the interference is coming in through the cables, rather than directly into the unit. Buy some of these filters and put one on every cable that is attached to the HiFi. (They just clip on, dead easy.) Put them as close to the HiFi end of the cable as you can.

You could also contact your local Ham Radio club. Radio Hams are qualified to troubleshoot this problem, and will probably have some of those filters they can try out.

Also try AIWA customer support. This is an EMC issue and their equipment is clearly at fault, especially if the filters do not fix the problem. The equipment must be immune to signals much stronger than anything even a faulty cell phone can generate. You should be able to make some headway with a "not fit for purpose" argument. I don't know the FCC EMC rules, but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't pass a European "CE" test with behavior like that.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:24 am

Chibuike wrote:

I use to come home thinking I had messages on my answering machine when in reality it was the cat purring and the telemarketer getting frustrated. Laughing

He also could open the cd drive on my computer and turn on my clock radio. I swear cats are aliens from another planet.

My fiance's cat used to sit on his old mobile phone and call people Laughing

I used to get long purring phone calls at strange times. He also texted people - I didn't believe this until I watched him do it. Just batted the phone multiple times, eventually hitting the 'send message' option. I got some lovely messages, such as pugthπ98�$^DEqERgkW�b.

It's very sad that his cat died in August - like most cats he was very wary of an intruder at first but eventually he would sit on my lap and purr like blazes, and of course he liked to keep in touch.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:05 pm

I double checked zenith is still producing stuff includeing the bose wave. the bose acustimas cude speakers i use to buy the driver for them thur a co. called madasound. they were 1.79 each i do have a frend who works at bose.... he wont even buy there stuff. he uses ADS and mark leveison

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:33 pm

Dang, 1.79 each. They must be putting in better stuff. Laughing

I have a new in box Heath/Zenith model ET-3100B electronic design experimenter kit from 1982 sitting on my desk. I wonder how it would work around cell phones.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:34 pm

i used to have a couple heathkit osilloscopes

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:48 am

Thanks for all the helpful tips everyone. Whoever suggested contacting the local Ham radio club was spot on. The guy came over wearing a tin foil hat and had my problem solved in minutes. Very funny dude. In the mean time my Bose radio arrived and I have fallen in love with music all over again. Cheers to all!

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 7:08 am

Ham radio operators are a pretty decent bunch of people Wink

Out of curiosity, what did he do to solve the problem?

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 7:37 pm

As the famous comedian says, "here's your sign". I had recently moved my stereo system from the west wall to the southeast corner of the room. That's when all this started occuring with the cell phone turning on the unit (it wasn't only my cell phone but people walking outside my apartment complex using a cell phone would cause this to happen). The ham radio guy moved my stereo system from the southeast corner of the room to the north wall. Problem solved. He said the southeast corner was a trough area and was catching all the signals because of the cell phone tower across the highway from my apartment complex. I should have figured this one out myself because I am a tv repairman's daughter. Sheesh. Rolling Eyes