Yamaha A-S500 broken volume motor dilemma

[harrisonjr98]

Hey all! I know that this and its newer sibling the A-S501 are very popular amps, so I figured somebody here might be able to help point me in the right direction. I have been happily using my Craigslist-find $100 Yammy A-S500 with my Wharfedale Lintons for a little while now, and could not be happier with the sound, power and experience of the Yamaha amp. It is really ideal for my current setup at the moment and it wouldn't be sensible to part with it without a good reason. Unfortunately, after being upgraded to "living room/TV setup" duty and the associated constant volume adjustment via the IR remote, the physical motor that controls the volume has decided it no longer wants to respond to "volume down" inputs anymore. It'll still turn clockwise and crank up the tunes all day, it just doesn't want to go home when the party's over Poor little guy.

At first when I began troubleshooting, I did not even realize that the IR remote controls an actual motor that turns the physical knob. This feels like an insanely over-engineered solution, but I guess that's what you get if you want the amp to use a real potentiometer control instead of just being fully control-by-wire. So now I'm in a pickle - I still love the amp, but I have this problem with it.

• I can't find a single reference to this volume knob motor failing *anywhere* on the internet, despite the popularity and longevity of this model/range. This really blew my mind because it feels like a pretty obvious thing to wear out over time, and... mine did!
• I can't find a replacement motor assembly, OEM or otherwise.
• I would prefer not to buy an entirely new DAC in order to control the volume from one of those - and besides, I don't trust them enough to dime the amp volume and pray the DAC won't forget its digital setting and randomly send a 0db signal through.
• I don't really want to add a random cheap preamp between my sources and the amp simply to attenuate the signal, if I could even find such a thing with a remote to begin with (initial searches on that front haven't turned up much other than totally passive pot-in-a-box solutions designed for powered studio monitors and such)

So I'm really stumped on this one! I cannot emphasize how much I enjoy everything else about this amp. Paired with the Lintons it is really the first time that I haven't had the itch to upgrade in a good long while, so I don't want to drop the ~$500-1k that I would need to in order to match the performance of the amp I already have in my rig. But my SO is going to kill me if she has to keep getting off the couch every time to change the volume.

Accepting advice, ideas (hacky or otherwise), ridicule, compliments, and anything in between.

Wish these were a real product!

 

[El_Duderino]

Did you check, if the button on the remote control is working properly?
You can do this with your smart phone or a digital camera by pressing the "volume down"-button on the amp remote and looking on your phone/camera screen while pointing the camera towards the ir led of the remote. If the button is working properly you should see a light flashing (only visible on the screen).

Btw: Here is a repair tutorial:

 

[harrisonjr98]

Welp, I feel like an idiot now. It's definitely the remote. It didn't occur to me to check it because the volume knob would still sometimes spin very very slowly counterclockwise, and it really made it look like the motor was going bad! One fixed remote later and it's back to full speed again. I am so happy that it was a free and easy fix.