Robert wrote:

I decided to clean the inside of my vintage Akai stereo receiver

Why ?

with
some QD Electronic Cleaner that I bought at Ace Hardware today. I took
the top off and sprayed liberal amounts of the cleaner inside and let
it dry out. However, when I hooked it back up, the receiver only comes
on at very low volume. It sounds as if the FM Mute button is stuck on.
It does the same thing to AM stations as well so maybe the Mute button
can be ruled out. I plugged in a pair of headphones and it didn't help.

Any suggestions?

You're a nitwit ?

What on earth gave you such a monumentally bad idea in the first place ?

A competent tech may be able to recover whatever you've done to it fortunately.
It won't be cheap though.

Graham