Back in the day, most analog TV's and audio equipment I would find on the curb could be brought back to life, at least for awhile, by going in and changing out the soldered in fuse. Obviously sometimes the fuse blew because of internal problems, but often was caused only by AC surges from the outside. But yes, many times the transformer was blown and went back to the curb, labelled with the problems I found for the next curb shopper.

> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:42:52 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> Hi, Frank,
> 
> As I understand consumer safety regulations, if you provide an 
> externally accessible fuse holder you still must have an internal, 
> soldered-in fuse that is not user changeable. I believe it may be of 
> higher value than what is in the user-accessible holder, but it still 
> must provide protection against the unit burning up. In the past that 
> was sometimes taken care of by installing a fusible link in the power 
> transformer that would render the transformer inoperative and you'd have 
> to replace the entire transformer. There have been different variations 
> of this over time, and different scenarios are probably acceptable, but 
> having a user-replaceable fuse as the only protection is not considered 
> protection at all. Even if the codes did not require it, I would suspect 
> the manufacturer's risk analyst/attorney would...unless the attorney was 
> an outside one looking for more defence work <smile>.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Richard
> 
> On 2012-01-31 10:15 AM, Frank Strauss wrote:
> > I discovered that the fuse was
> > soldered in.  It's toward the back left.  It indeed was blown.  I cut it
> > out and put in a fuse holder/fuse from Radio Shack. The radio has worked
> > well since then. I am puzzled why they would solder the fuse in.  I guess
> > they want you to send it back for repair.
> 
> -- 
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada           (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.