Onkyo TX-DS989 w/no sound from front speakers

[GlenMartin]

I recently acquired one of these 50lb monsters from a friend whose husband passed away in May. The unit is 7.1 version 2 and sounds so amazing. Through the headphones only that is. I get sound from the surround speakers but the front speakers are dead. I put my ears up to each speaker and usually you can hear a little bit of amp noise if you listen closely but these were deader than a door nail. I didn't try the sub-woofer..I also read all through the manual and tried all settings to no avail. So I did a factory reset and still nothing. Does anyone have any idea where I should start looking for this problem? I want to keep it. I have a newer 3 year old Onkyo home theater receiver which is monsterish too and love it. I did some digging and saw the TX-DS989 retailed from $2,500 to $3,200 in 2000. I priced them on Ebay and there are some listings close to $1K. Don't know if it would be an easy fix or a shop repair. Thanks.

 

[JohnRice]

My gut feeling is that it's fried.

When it comes to items like that, people can list them for whatever they want on eBay, but it's not worth anything in the real world.

Actually, I do have an idea. Looking at the back of the receiver, it has jumpers for the front three channel amps. If any of those are missing, you won't get any audio to those channels. They are the metal posts you can see between the line out and amp in for the L, R and C channels at the top left.

If the jumpers are gone and you don't have them, you can reconnect them with short RCA cables.

 

[GlenMartin]

You are correct. I did see the jumpers when inspecting the unit but did not catch on that they were installed incorrectly. Instead of vertically as shown in the the image above, they were in horizontally. I switched them back to vertical and I was in business. It is a very nice unit and hooked it up to my Klipsch satellite home theater speakers and it truly performs. Thanks for the response. I got the same response on another message group which got me going. Thanks again! Happy camper here!

 

[JohnRice]

Glad I could help.