2510 specific faults: *see note at end
B+ always on the final
Low level AM modulation by unbalancing the balanced modulator.
Well known but easily fixed audio feedback loop.
Deaf as a board compared to even a Cobra 25GTL
Regulators in the PLL/mezzanine board fail, occasionally taking the PLL with them.
What over voltage protection?
Back light cooks the mounting
Display failures due to a bad ribbon connector or the display.
The display will freeze and never be the same. Likewise the display will cook and fail completely.
Microphones were junk. Element, switches and cord were all failure points. Otherwise when it was working it sounded great.
What a convoluted tuning procedure to get the carrier oscillators(s) the same distance from filter center that could be as much as 500 cycles out of spec.
Chassis ground is board ground is logic ground is ground. Ground a chassis screw and apply a hot lead .
This necessarily made eliminating vehicle noise a one sided deal. Kill it at the source or not at all.
Buttons, switches, potentiometers, potentiometer switches all sourced as cheap as possible and none available on the common market for years. When they did come available they were the same crap or worse than originally installed.
The rear accessory plug was junk.
Simply by design the phase noise of the synthesizer and its broadbanded nature on receive limited the selectivity and sensitivity.
My one working 2510 has the B+ relay switched.
The major electrolytics replaced/upgraded
The audio feedback diode/resistor
The filter deserves its own post.
All the front panel switches and potentiometers have been replaced at least once.
It's on its third display
Rit is now a Tit
ECG 340 is the predrive
Q101 the first RF is now a low noise FET (3SK35?) This took a complete redesign that again is a whole subject to itself.
So is the 2510 and its ilk junk? No, with the above qualifications.
My subjective opinion is that the design was solid but compromised first by its broadband nature and then by the button sorters, bean counters, and cost accounting pencil pushers. Where ever a penny could be shaved it was. Simply by offering a more robust component list and more durable display it could have been a benchmark radio. Instead it exists in myth, legend and lore as a unique but flawed offering to a narrow niche market . That alone may be the single most important limitation of the radio.
*Even I am going to miss a few annoying faults and fixes.
I thought the message was clear enough without diving further into minutia ...
