Saturday, August 1, 2020

Pioneer F-223

I recently acquired a Pioneer F-223 digital tuner from a friend.

Front view of Pioneer F-223 with main portion of test cable for antenna on top of unit
View of internals from the top

Was surprised the F-223 was "Made in Japan" (on the label, on the back of the tuner). Not much luck Google-ing for additional information or checking FMTUNERINFO but did managed to locate the service manual at HIFIengine.

F-223 Made in Japan
Voltage selector on the bottom of unit, towards the front as indicated by arrow


 The F-223 has the looks of an average tuner for the era. Extremely easy to use without the necessity to go thru the manual 1st. A big bonus of the F-223 is the large number of memory storage for stations eg 24 per band. After a station has been detected, you need to press MEMORY followed by a storage location before the details will be kept.

Was considering recapping the unit but discovered the capacitors on the audio path (red-line in the service manual schematics) had been recapped using Panasonic equivalents when the rest of the unit had used the old fashion ELNA(s) throughout.

The tuner seem to be pretty good at picking up the signals of the main stations easily via the AUTO-TUNE facility using nothing more than a short piece of wire - see pix. It did not pickup stations such as 89.3FM but to be fair, I was just performing an initial test and it was not connected to a proper antenna setup. Believe the F-223 would perform much better if I had done so.

Using a short piece of cable for initial FM tuner testing

Surprisingly a pretty good unit which just works with above average performance.



4 comments:

  1. Hi WCK,

    Are you able to service a Quad FM3?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You will need to sent the tuners (any brand/model) to a shop or someone with the proper equipment to service them

      Delete
  2. Hi WCK

    Guess I will have to send to Huntington for a realignment.

    Many Thanks and have a Blessed day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unit sold as own too many tuners

    ReplyDelete