I think you misunderstood the intention of what I was saying. I don't
disagree that old receivers can often be 'improved' - at least on the face
of it - by tweaking up the front end. I was just saying that this particular
fault, which is a lack of stereo decoding irrespective of how strong the
received station is, is unlikely to be as a result of anything prior to the
demodulator being out of alignment. I suppose it is just conceivable that if
the IFs were sufficiently wrongly stagger tuned, you might just be able to
screw up the pilot tone recovery, but I think that if it was that badly
misaligned, it would be unlikely that it would ever work, which it does
sometimes, and that lack of stereo decoding would be the most noticable
symptom. As the OP says that he is not skilled with receivers, and alignment
was being suggested by other posters as being a possible cause, I did not
want him to go in with random twiddling, which would quite possibly compound
the problem.


You're right, I misunderstood your meaning. Sorry.

Definitely agree that the OP should not be attempting to do any IF/Mpx
alignment
w/o proper tools and know-how. I do remember that, even with a test
generator
made expressly for this purpose (which cost about $1000, 20 years
ago), it was
not easy/fun at all.

I don't think that I can recall ever having a stereo decoding issue with one
of these old receivers, that was not down to discriminator alignment, pilot
tone PLL misalignment, or a genuine faulty component around the decoder
chip. Would you agree with that analysis ? :-)


Agree 100%, did not mean to construe otherwise.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify.