Tuning indicator high when not in tune

I downloaded your Service Manual, and its not a good clear edition. I did find your Mute switch but the whole trace system is unreadable. Thar sounds like an unusual signal meter reaction. I will see if I can find about Problems and If I find anything you will know.

Heres a good article on a variety of signal meter history and function.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

from my very limited observation on that article, I would think you might have a suppressor capacitor in the A.G.C. circuit area.
Now noise can overwhelm any radio signal as you know, so without your I.F. sections working there too could be a problem.

Is the noise in the local vicinity? (house? (Too many wall warts or computer switching power supplies ) or it may be noise from the power lines.
Is it atmospheric ?

Did you look to see if you have a broken wire or a cold solder joint. A power spike that may have damaged an I.C. or component?
And if you didn't have a static wrist strap wile touching any static sensitive Micro Chip then I think you will have a difficult if not a Impossible task.

Any shielding in the circuit? Maybe a defective ground or missing antenna. (unlikely though).

I downloaded your Service Manual, and its not a good clear edition. I did find your Mute switch but the whole trace system is unreadable. Thar sounds like an unusual signal meter reaction. I will see if I can find about Problems and If I find anything you will know.

Since my earlier post I discovered there is something called "mute mode" and it sounds like this is exactly what is missing or got broken. If I could only figure out which part of the circuit does that. Here is the service manual, which also has the full schematics.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
I should also mention that recently the drum fell off the axle of the tuning capacitor so I had to restring. I was wondering if in the process I deformed the capacitor or somehow threw it out of tune, though it seems that the worst that this could do is an error in the frequency dial.

Hello, recently my Hitachi FT-M1 FM tuner developed a problem where the 5-LED tuning indicator shows 4 out of 5 when when not near a station, with loud "static", making moving between stations annoying. I'm pretty sure this is a new problem and it used to be that the 5 LEDs were meaningful, in that between stations I would get no or maybe two, and the static would be suppressed. Is it likely that some adjustment got knocked out of alignment? I'm not super familiar with FM radios. I'd appreciate some advice to point me to the right trail. Thanks!
Yanko