Could I Adopt Audio Gear Repair As a Hobby?
January 28, 2026 11:32 AM Subscribe
It has been a long time since I’ve learned a new thing and I’ve been thinking it might be fun to be able to tinker with old audio gear–vintage stereo receivers, mostly, for starters. How would you approach getting into this?
Basically just looking for a hobby, and you know, if a side benefit is that I could fix my own old amplifiers when a channel goes out or whatever, that would be great! I actually hate lugging my old Marantz to the San Fernando Valley and dropping it off for an unknown number of weeks, waiting to pay an unknown number of dollars.
I am just curious how folks might approach starting with this. The bu…
Could I Adopt Audio Gear Repair As a Hobby?
January 28, 2026 11:32 AM Subscribe
It has been a long time since I’ve learned a new thing and I’ve been thinking it might be fun to be able to tinker with old audio gear–vintage stereo receivers, mostly, for starters. How would you approach getting into this?
Basically just looking for a hobby, and you know, if a side benefit is that I could fix my own old amplifiers when a channel goes out or whatever, that would be great! I actually hate lugging my old Marantz to the San Fernando Valley and dropping it off for an unknown number of weeks, waiting to pay an unknown number of dollars.
I am just curious how folks might approach starting with this. The buckets I’ve broken it into so far are:
Basic Electronics * Basic gear (multimeter, etc) * Learning to solder (I ordered a few little kits for beginners) * Learning about the basic science of amps, volts, current, circuits etc. * Learning safety, i.e. not electrocuting myself because I don’t know what a capacitor is.
My guess is most people would say YouTube is sufficient here, but I was thinking I’d take a couple community college courses just because I prefer that environment and it’s close to free. Do you think I should take a different approach?
Learning to Read Schematics My general thought here is that I’d find a cheap unit for "parts or repair" online, and then download the related schematics and charts and just sort of . . . presto, learn. But is there a specific book, class, etc that I should consider?
Learning How to Source Parts Dunno where to start but I’m guessing just google.
Miscellaneous I know a big part of this is just sort of, developing a detective sense for old equipment and what goes wrong with it. But are there books, manuals, websites, etc that might help me jumpstart this?
Are there things I’m not thinking about that I should be?
Also, am I thinking this is going to be a fun hobby but in your experience it’s just a frustrating nightmare?
posted by kensington314 to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite