Hi!

Your purpose in coming here seemed quite quixotic, not to
say masochistic, and therefore provoked curiosity:

I've never been described in quite that way before. ;-)

Hard to imagine anything other than frequent failure would
provoke this quest.

To the contrary...I have a number of these sets used in various
applications. All are well treated and used under reasonable
conditions. I've never had a failure, even when making heavy demands
from the set. The one time I accidentally shorted a pair of speaker
wires, the set's protection functioned just as it should and there was
no lasting damage.

Yet I look around on the 'net and see people saying "well, the
Sherwood unit blew up, blew sparks and smoke, shuts off past a certain
volume level or just shut down one day, never to turn on again". What
few repairs I've seen done suggested that blown final transistors or
bad filter caps were the cause. My experiences don't align with what
people were saying.

I have no particularly good reason for wanting to know other than to
say I am eternally curious. "Why?" is one of my favorite questions. As
proof that I have no shortage of obnoxious opinions, troubleshooting
and repairing this receiver was arguably more worthwhile than watching
what passes for television these days.

Regarding the purpose of the group: Generally people come here to get
information to help them repair various pieces of electronic
equipment, often because their livelihood depends on it. Instead, you
want advice so you can redesign this run of the mill receiver for
greater reliability.

Not totally. I wanted to share what I found, in the case that other
people here, who might someday be faced with the same situation, could
potentially find a solution. Though I've not been here for a while, I
am not new to the group or its purpose. Your initial response was
taken to mean more of a "why would I bother repairing that piece of
junk".

If I think that something I've repaired could break in the same way,
making a better repair or improvement to the design is something I'd
go ahead and do, provided it does not involve a massive reworking. As
I have never found any simple linear regulator better spec'd than the
78xx series, I thought I'd throw the question in while I was here.

I don't do this professionally, nor do I have the audacity to claim
that I am a professional. I'm just someone who knows a modest amount
and takes an interest from the sidelines.

Why clutter up such a clean and straightforward internal design with
adequate cooling?

No doubt the unit was designed to a price. Who could say what the
original designers had in mind...or maybe they just made a mistake.

It has to be said that Sherwood has been (mostly) helpful along the
course of this repair, much more so than the competion (Sony and
TEAC).

William