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Problems with Pioneer Pro 510HD, 610HD, 710HD, SD532HD, 582HD, 642HD

15K views 91 replies 16 participants last post by  Mr Bob 
#1 ·
If you have had intermittent, infuriatingly hard to pin down problems with these units, please see this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post18948575


All units listed use the same power supply board - PS board for short - and have the same issues. Please disregard the opening pages of this thread, except for the problem descriptions. Avoid the fixes, they will only get you into trouble, more about that later.


At that time we were all shooting in the dark as to what the causes were. Now it has come to light that the entire PS board on these units - and many in the following year's models as well - was badly soldered by Pioneer, causing cold solder joints that would crop up years later, after countless cycles of heat and cold due to power up/down commands and countless regular viewing periods.


If you are noticing any intermittencies - blue flashes, fluctuating brightness, lack of picture even tho the unit's green indicator LED is still up and showing ops without any shutdowns - you're up and your board has finally failed. It will not get any better on its own, any more than needed dental work would.


If so, STOP USING YOUR SET. You must not allow it up to normal operating temp again, not even once, until this situation has been completely resolved.


Resoldering the board PROPERLY is the only way around these problems. Newbies opt out NOW. If you're a repair, design or assembly professional who does soldering every day and you are highly experienced, have at it, you can fix it yourself. If not, PLEASE don't make this your initial entry into the world of soldering! Far too much is riding on it, it has to be done right the first time, every time, before firing the unit up again. Nothing can be left to chance, and this is an impossibility if you are inexperienced and new to this sort of thing.


If any solder bridges are allowed past the inspection process, or any of the critical solder joints are left unresoldered - and 99% of them on that board need to be resoldered for permanent repair - I can't promise you exactly what would happen, only that it would not be good. Doing a partial job of the resoldering process - resoldering only those joints that are presently bad - only exacerbates the situation. Your set will work again, seemingly properly, but will go out again after awhile. Doing only a partial job - like most local service techs will do, spending only a modicum of time on it, the smallest amount of time they feel is absolutely required - makes your set all that more vulnerable to damage later as new solder joints go thru more continued heat/cold cycles, weaken and then go out themselves. The initial ones that go out and give you the warning signs are almost always not the highly damaging ones. Curing just those and continuing to use your set is a sure recipe for disaster, it's like playing Russian Roulette with your set.


If you are qualified to do this yourself, be my guest. This is a DIYer site first and foremost.


If you're not, please feel free to contact me and I'll get your set going again for you, even if you live far away. Boards are being sent to me every day with this problem, and I take care of them and send them back. Seems when you spend $5K, 6K, 7K - and I have heard of as much as $12K paid for the 710 back then - on your Pioneer Elite CRT set, as owner you want it to stay alive from then on, and these sets are only midway along in their life cycles. They were built to last. You paid for that, you deserve to have it.


And the HD they were designed to produce is to die for, properly dialed in. It is legendary and timeless. There is no reason to buy new, if you own a Pioneer Elite CRT. You just need to honor it with the proper attention.


I am here for that. I have extensive experience in this problem - I am all over that thread, which has been going on for more than 6 years now, since 2004. Read the last few pages of it. If you want this thing done right, please contact me directly, no pm's please. I have so far saved literally TONS of these elegant and top-performing HD Elites, which are still in their prime. Many screenshots of finished products are in that thread, ready to be viewed.


Please help me save your set!



Mr Bob
 
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#52 ·
Alan assures me that the guns have had very light duty, he bought her new and only drove her on Sunday. Like one movie a week, average, I think. I am sure those guns are virtually brand new!


Alan, I recommend you reprint your post here over at the main Pioneer Elite 510 Problems thread -

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post18948575


b
 
#54 ·
Ok, disassembly is near completion. Power supply board is taken. Gun assembly is available as are photos. Lenticular screen is in PRISTENE condition. Convergence board and HV secondary supply also mint condition and available. Email me for photos: proaudio 5 at Hotmail dot com (spambot adversive please remove spaces) If you are looking for a chassis, are local and willing to pick up please let me know ASAP... Otherwise it gets the hydroulic treatment compliments of the town landfill.


-A
 
#55 ·
I have a 710 in perfect working order that I will be replacing soon with a 70X5FD. I had the contrast screen (I would call it the screen of infinite reflections) removed years ago and had the 710 calibrated by Eliab Alvarez de la Campa from Avical. I still have the screen.


This baby has been a dependable beast for years and is looking for a nice home. If anyone knows someone who might be interested, please PM me.

Thanks,

Jim
 
#56 ·



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Mostly professional grade work done by Pioneer, just not nearly enough of it








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Not quite up to par - most pro techs know not to make their soldering work look like revolving guns on the Death Star...







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Resoldered joints to keep solder fluidly connecting all points of the joint together







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Some joints not redone at all by Pioneer, and some others redone by me. Can you tell which? Hint - Dull, thin and mottled = will eventually go out. Gleaming and glossy = will never go out







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An entire section left unresoldered by Pioneer. One of many







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Seemingly innocent original Pioneer factory solder joints, unresoldered by Pioneer in their rebuilt PS board







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The truth - an accident waiting to happen. See the halos? These joints have already started their journey to the dark side. It's only a matter of time now before those cracks go 360 around the leg and cause a complete non-connection. Which could unground a voltage clamp in a voltage regulation circuit, exposing your set to runaway amounts of voltage downline from the power supply, which is what this board is







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More halos. These will take longer to go than others, but will eventually go. They have already begun to degrade.







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What happens to a super thin joint whose halos have already formed and are near going 360, when I have touched my soldering iron to it but before I have added the required solder







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More unsoldered areas







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Verdict: If you trust your set to Pioneer's rebuilt boards, you'll be right back where you started soon, and this time it might not be the innocuous joints that let go. It could be the more advanced ones that will hit your set hard and possibly total it. The ones that let go early on are not the dangerous ones, it's the later ones that get you.


The blue flash is a warning shot across the bow. If you don't heed that warning and continue using your set in a normal viewing fashion, you're playing Russian Roulette with it. The ones that happen after that are the much more serious ones. If you get only those joints that are presently bad taken care of, that exposes the later ones sooner, and with no further warning.


Recommendation: If you have somebody do it or you feel the need to do it yourself, be aware that 99% of the solder joints on that board need to be resoldered to professional grade level. If you have it done by them or do it yourself, you must insist on this. It's a tedious, time consuming job that takes hours and requires the best lighting and magnification - and the greatest of care to not allow even one solder bridge (or any other mistake) - but is the only way to get it done right, and permanently. If you are not professional grade at soldering and don't know anybody who is, let me take care of it for you. I'll do it the right way, and permanently restore your set to 100% solid reliability again. You also get a lifetime warranty on my work on this operation. I stand by my work on these PS boards forever.


b
 
#57 ·
This was just posted on another thread, thought I'd share it with you here -


Quote:
Originally Posted by najames /forum/post/6631932


Holy Cow Dave Harper!!! You said ISF is in Florida, so I decided to see where they're located. They're about 5-10 minutes from my house!! Didn't even know it, too darned funny.


I have an elderly Pioneer SD-532HD5 like this one.

http://www4.shopping.com/xFS?KW=pion...Video&FD=85747


I might just need to have this thing calibrated some day. It works OK and has been moved across the country twice, in storage for a couple years, never been touched except when I used the Avia disk set it up initially and when I moved here in Boca Raton 3 years ago.

Just noticed this post in another thread, from way back in '05.


Just so you know, those "elderly" CRT RPTVs are not old, they have a 20 year service life - or more, I've seen it, recently heard about a 29 year old Panny CRT 50" that's still cranking away just fine - and at today's stage are only halfway thru it. I know of an "old" curved screen bounce-off-the-screen Sears CRT whose guns fire at the hinged mirror that you pull out and let fall into place to start it up, that's still cranking away just fine too. We've been looking for someone to take it home and keep it going, or hopefully get it to some sort of video museum, tho I have never actually heard of one...


Well treated by their owners re. usage, light levels and avoidance of screenburn, they are capable of WAY better than new performance at all ages, even at 11 years old.


I am being flown all over the country cleaning and calibrating these "elderly" beasts, which are capable of incredible HD, head and shoulders better than a lot of the "affordable" fixed pixel offerings out there in today's marketplace. And better looking in some ways than all fixed pixel offerings.


The main thing that not everybody knows about them is that their optics need to be cleaned yearly.


On some brands - like the Pioneers, be they Elite or non-Elite - the "deeper optics" need it every few years as well. That's because of the air gap between the lens barrels and the CRT coolant covers, where 6 additional surfaces get invaded by dust, soot, smoke and all manner of other airborn contaminants, and thus compromised because of the high voltage turning them into powerful, continuous dust magnets every moment they are powered on.


There's 28 optical surfaces in there that need to stay crystal clear, either 4 or 10 of which, depending on brand, get heavily compromised because of the HV. When all 28 surfaces are clean and polished and you have a crystal clear light path again, the results are truly astonishing. Like getting a brand new TV for a simple hour's work.


Just doing this one thing gives your "elderly" set a brand new looking picture - in my area my calibrations are called "The Sparkle Process" - and calibration after that is just incredible icing on the cake.


I started the "Don't Dump Your CRT RPTV!" thread here on AVS more than 5 years ago, and it is still going strong, with over 300 completed pages so far and over 9000 posts. If you have a CRT RPTV at all, HD or non-HD, I invite you to go over there and check it out.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...95922&page=327


If you have a CRT RPTV or know someone who does and want info about how to do your optics cleaning with no damage - those soft plastic surfaces in there are incredibly delicate, vulnerable and easily scratched, and any damage to them is permanent - contact me directly, by email or phone. No pm's please!


Thx -


Mr Bob
 
#58 ·
I recently purchased a new Oppo blu-ray player and decided to give my 510HD a quick tune-up in preparation for this new input. When I entered the service mode and brought up the convergence, all the modes seemed ok during a quick review; however, when I got to the 'H' mode (Full - HD), the horizontal convergence grid lines curved towards the corners and all three colors were disbanded around the edges of the TV.


I can easily go intersection to intersection and converge the green red and blue, but I am concerned about the horizontal lines curving. All other display modes are nice and square.


Is this normal in Full HD mode? I've attached an image of the lower left corner as I found it, showing how the horizontal convergence lines curve towards the corners.


Thanks.


Chris
 
#59 ·
An overall grid shot would also be good. You say the same thing is happening in all 4 corners, but at opposite directions? Or same directions? We really need to see a full grid to know for sure.


What you're describing is vertical pincushion, and such a thing rarely happens just on 1 scanrate.


Whatever you do, don't change anything in there at this point esp. in service menu, where your original settings get wiped out once you memorize anything in there, till we know more. Could be that everything will fall back into place once this one thing has been remedied.


b
 
#61 ·
One by one, try reeling down the reg values on r g and b, on GV Pin, in sm, starting with g. This will change only the HD mem, not your SD mem's.


Then bring up red Hor, or RH, and adjust #7, HLIN. That will get your side edges better on the red, vs. the green and blue.


I would not change any point values until you've optimized the Coarse values first.


b
 
#62 ·
#63 ·
The latest, from last week. This board was an accident waiting to happen.


Notice the pair of solder joints about to go bad on the left of the pic at upside down "R218", to the left of the really bad one at "L219". Both ends of resistor 218 have the telltale "halo" around the leg that eventually turns into the very obvious one on the right at L219. While that pair of halos at R218 is looking very innocent right now, it's only a matter of time before the on/off-heat up/cool down-expand/contract cycles of normal operation cause those halos to get cut deeper and deeper into the solder they are in, until both of them "go 360" like the circle of complete non-connection that's so very garishly apparent in the one to the right at L219.


Plus the one just at the edge of the shadow and the one just below that, in the string of pin connections to the right:










And for those of you wondering if I am still doing this, yes I am. Keep sending me your boards and I'll keep your big screens working.


b
 
#64 ·
Today's batch, from the board in front of me right now -




 
#65 ·
I just added some stuff to post 63 above, if you've already read it you might want to go over it again -


b
 
#66 ·
Just an update, I was more or less curious if the horizontal lines were suppose to curve to the corners in Full - HD; obviously they are not suppose to.


Anyway, found some time to get back in. I can't explain it, but the curvature was not as severe this time. What a mystery. I performed the coarse adjustment on the GV anyway, at times using a 4-ft level to ensure everything was square. Then went and adjusted the reds, and then the blues. Much better now. My wife's first comment was, text on the screen was nice and crisp. I'll probably go back in after a month or so to check it. Attached are the before and after images in F mode.

 
#67 ·
I like pic #2!




b
 
#68 ·
I'm wondering if I might get some advise on my Pioneer Elite HD610 64 inch. I bought it new in 2001 and its only been serviced once. It has just developed a convergence problem. I have replaced the STK chips in my Mits 20 years ago and re-soldered all the boards on my Pioneer Elite 50 inch 1989 vintage, so I sort of know what I'm in for .


I'm hoping with some guidance I can pinpoint the issue and order parts if needed to restore the best rear projection I've ever owned back to original. I thought I'd tag on to the end of this thread instead of creating a new one.


...Rob
 
#69 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by camelpowered /forum/post/21311621


Just an update, I was more or less curious if the horizontal lines were suppose to curve to the corners in Full - HD; obviously they are not suppose to.


Anyway, found some time to get back in. I can't explain it, but the curvature was not as severe this time. What a mystery. I performed the coarse adjustment on the GV anyway, at times using a 4-ft level to ensure everything was square. Then went and adjusted the reds, and then the blues. Much better now. My wife's first comment was, text on the screen was nice and crisp. I'll probably go back in after a month or so to check it. Attached are the before and after images in F mode.

Hope you used the GV Pin register. That's what it's for, that curvature at the top and bottom.


Be sure when you go to do the fine point settings, your pic/grid is only at midpoint on its light level. And that ideally you use an external grid to do it. If you use the internal grid, the overall contrast/light level has to be turned down substantially to get it to arrive at the screen at a nice average midpoint amount of light level, then turned back up before you leave sm. Otherwise its internal grid lines are way too hot and that makes the lines way too thick and overmodulated for high precision work.


I use my Accupel HD signal generator, which has the ideal light level and thinness of grid lines for this purpose.


If anyone out there wants to use my spare Accupel for this purpose, contact me and we'll arrange something. My spare is the older version which does not have DVI/HDMI, but that is not a worry on the CRT RPTVs. Component is all you need, which is what that Accupel has, along with RGBHV.



b
 
#70 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by robramm /forum/post/21602775


I'm wondering if I might get some advise on my Pioneer Elite HD610 64 inch. I bought it new in 2001 and its only been serviced once. It has just developed a convergence problem. I have replaced the STK chips in my Mits 20 years ago and re-soldered all the boards on my Pioneer Elite 50 inch 1989 vintage, so I sort of know what I'm in for .


I'm hoping with some guidance I can pinpoint the issue and order parts if needed to restore the best rear projection I've ever owned back to original. I thought I'd tag on to the end of this thread instead of creating a new one.


...Rob

The 610 is a 58 inch, sorry to pop your bubble, there... The 710 is the 64".


When you replace your ICs in the 610, be sure and upgrade to the STK 392-180s, and use only first run parts. Don't skimp and wind up with factory seconds, just to save a coupla bucks.


BTW, restoring these babies back to BETTER than original is my specialty. Google me and you'll get an eyeful. Turn me loose on it and you'll get the best possible job on your set. Page 45 of another AVS thread contains screenshots of my work in other parts of the country -

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...402397&page=45


Just scroll down until you see the pretty pictures!




b
 
#71 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Bob /forum/post/21602855


The 610 is a 58 inch, sorry to pop your bubble, there... The 710 is the 64".


When you replace your ICs in the 610, be sure and upgrade to the STK 392-180s, and use only first run parts. Don't skimp and wind up with factory seconds, just to save a coupla bucks.


BTW, restoring these babies back to BETTER than original is my specialty. Google me and you'll get an eyeful. Turn me loose on it and you'll get the best possible job on your set. Page 45 of another AVS thread contains screenshots of my work in other parts of the country -

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...402397&page=45


Just scroll down until you see the pretty pictures!




b

I just measured the screen and it measures 64 inches diagonally. I always thought it was a 610, but maybe it is a 710. It is all enclosed in a wall unit so I have some work to get at the back. Would the 610 measure 64 diagonal inches?

I'm up in Canada so I'm not so sure how easy it would be to get to you. Are the STK chips behind the speaker grill up front like some of the older models?
 
#72 ·
Nope, you absolutely have to get behind the set and remove the lower cover to get to the convergence board. Stay away from the slanted section in the top half, which houses the mirror! You never remove that slanted section at the back with the mirror installed. It will nosedive into your screen sandwich, damaging both itself and your screen.


The viewable area of the screen is how they measure. So if it measures 64", it's definitely a 710, not a 610.


You can always send me a board to work on, I will test it out here before I send it back. I test on a 610, which uses the same boards as the 510 and the 710.


b
 
#73 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Bob /forum/post/21607654


Nope, you absolutely have to get behind the set and remove the lower cover to get to the convergence board. Stay away from the slanted section in the top half, which houses the mirror! You never remove that slanted section at the back with the mirror installed. It will nosedive into your screen sandwich, damaging both itself and your screen.


The viewable area of the screen is how they measure. So if it measures 64", it's definitely a 710, not a 610.


You can always send me a board to work on, I will test it out here before I send it back. I test on a 610, which uses the same boards as the 510 and the 710.


b

Thanks, I'll make sure of the model #. Know about the mirror. I just disassembled my 50 inch pioneer SD 502R and saved the mirror to frame, made some splashguards out of the nice plastic holding it for my car and will repurpose the wood for a bench. Just a pile of circuit boards and the guns now. Too bad I couldn't find anyone who wanted an NTSC TV. The cabinet and screen was mint condition and it had a nice picture.
 
#74 ·
I've heard they can make for good puppet shows...




b
 
#75 ·
Hi Bob,

I just received my board back, installed it and nearly fell over when it came back to life. WOW! Let me start by saying, my set has been inop for more than 4 years. However, I couldn't bring myself to throw it away for three simple reasons. First, when it did work, it had a gorgeous picture. Second, it is a beautiful piece of furniture. Third, and most importantly, it cost me a buttload of money when I bought it. I might add that due to unavailability, I had never seen HD on my set. Well, I made the right decision in reading your blog and sending the board to you for repair. The set works like the day I brought it home, and for the first time I've experienced HD on it. You fall into the "highly recommend" category in my book. Thanks again!

Jerry
 
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