No RF on SNES?

Recently I turned on my SNES and had no signal on the screen, thinking it was a bad connection between the cart and the SNES I blew into the cart to no avail. I then took my N64 composite cables and lo and behold it worked. I did test it and I'm sure it is the RF port because my NES RF adapter did not work with it either. I've decided to go buy some composite cables for it, but is it worth buying official cables, or will 3rd party ones work just as well (as long as they are not S-Video and Composite)?

Also, I plan on opening it up soon to clean it out ( I bought it used) and to break away remaining some plastic to let it play NTSC-J games and I would like the RF to work again, might it be something simple like a capacitor?

 

Why use RF and Not composite?

N64 AV cables work perfectly fine, as do Gamecube ones(I switch my Gamecube's Av cables in and out with my SNES)

 

I do plan on using composite, but I would like the RF fixed so if the AV out dies for some reason, I'll have a fallback.

 

if your snes was falling back so badly it might be a good idea to get another one

 

x

 

Ah, thanks for reminding me about that switch. I found out two things from trying that. One, switching it to channel 4 makes it work (thanks again!). Two, my RF adapter works as an antenna. I'm not sure if that's good or bad but I can pick up TV stations with it.

 

Given that the RF modulator needs the composite video signal that you are using from AV then the chance of the RF working if the composite video part dies are slim...

What sort of masocist would want to use RF over composite video anyway?

RF modulators contain lots of horrible components that are tricky to test without removing them, so it tends to be easier just to replace the modulator but a new one is probably as expensive as a second hand SNES so defeats the point...