And then you got the "re-mastered" copies... and the different pressings of the LP.
Then you got Santana's Black Magic Woman... the first LP pressings had the L/R channels backwards. They didn't realize this until they went to cut the CD. The congas appear to the left, and back of the left speaker... in my LP.... but releases after the mid 80s, all have them to the right.
OK, some good news.
(1) I opened up the box and used some Deoxit on the switches, they work perfectly now.
(2) As I was in it, I saw it is made up of a mother board with some plug in boards. The boards use old style -ie: large- plastic plug in connectors. The boards are kept in place with a sculpted foam block. I take it the factory was aware of the rather fragile nature of the connectors.
(3) The leftmost board, looking from the front, handles the expander. If I wiggle it the left channel comes and goes. So, I pulled it out and cleaned out the connector (which looked clean), it did't make much of a difference, so I think the issue is on the other side of the mother board.
(4) The next two boards are the correlator boards... #2 is right and # 3 is left. I sent pictures to my guy and he replied "caps are really early Nippon Chemi-con and low density fiber circuit boards, Problem with those is low trace adhesion. Luxmand had that problem on early 70s stuff". He ought to know, he's a Luxman guru...
(5) Anyhow the interior is amazingly in good shape. So, I sort of played with the foam block to apply some sideways pressure on the expander board and closed it up. I'll take to my guy when he gets free time. I really don't want to mess with this thing. And it works.
LISTENING
(1) The processing is based on the level of the signal. The tuner has a volume control so that affects the level of the signal fed to the processor.
(2) I got the processor in the EPL ( tape deck ) loop of the preamp. So, I can do comparisons quickly with the preamp's remote.
(3) The autocorrelator is in essence a smart high and low cut filter with the knee frequencies adjustable from the front panel knobs. It robs the bass from the tuner, regardless of the setting. I can hear the filter for the treble as well, but I had the tuner set up to FM Muting and the signal is strong enough, i don't have a noise problem. Because of the bass cut, I decided to keep this circuit disabled.
(4) The expander is noticeable. You set it so the front panel LED turns on and off with the volume of the signal. I can really hear it... mostly you notice the loud levels do get louder while the soft levels don't change. It's very obvious. Just to be on the safe side, I turned off my eyes, so I couldn't see the preamp settings, and turn on and off the EPL loop. Didn't count, so I didn't know what setting it was set to... so I sat down to listen.
As I toggled the remote to enable/disable the EPL loop, I could hear a difference, quite clear. I did listen in some 20 second intervals, so it gave me the opportunity to compare the same song ( many songs ). This time I counted as I was switching, but with my eyes closed, I did not know which was which. At some point, I decided that one of the setting did some a little bit louder on the peaks.. when I opened my eyes I noticed it was indeed the Phase Linear... the important thing is that the lows didn't sound louder. So, I guess the dynamic range was increased.
It does sound better. Quite subtle but it does the trick nicely.
Have not used it with the LP as a source, but, I doubt I need it.. because it does sound very quiet already... but, I guess I'll see if I can find a "noisy" LP and try that out.
GOING FORWARD
I got to see if I can clean out the dbx118.
After that I will take both to my guy and fully clean them out... might even change the opamp on the analog board of the Phase Linear.
Also, will look at the Pioneer units.
Here's the porno. The left most picture is how I left the foam so it puts some force sideways on the leftmost board.
(1) I opened up the box and used some Deoxit on the switches, they work perfectly now.
(2) As I was in it, I saw it is made up of a mother board with some plug in boards. The boards use old style -ie: large- plastic plug in connectors. The boards are kept in place with a sculpted foam block. I take it the factory was aware of the rather fragile nature of the connectors.
(3) The leftmost board, looking from the front, handles the expander. If I wiggle it the left channel comes and goes. So, I pulled it out and cleaned out the connector (which looked clean), it did't make much of a difference, so I think the issue is on the other side of the mother board.
(4) The next two boards are the correlator boards... #2 is right and # 3 is left. I sent pictures to my guy and he replied "caps are really early Nippon Chemi-con and low density fiber circuit boards, Problem with those is low trace adhesion. Luxmand had that problem on early 70s stuff". He ought to know, he's a Luxman guru...
(5) Anyhow the interior is amazingly in good shape. So, I sort of played with the foam block to apply some sideways pressure on the expander board and closed it up. I'll take to my guy when he gets free time. I really don't want to mess with this thing. And it works.
LISTENING
(1) The processing is based on the level of the signal. The tuner has a volume control so that affects the level of the signal fed to the processor.
(2) I got the processor in the EPL ( tape deck ) loop of the preamp. So, I can do comparisons quickly with the preamp's remote.
(3) The autocorrelator is in essence a smart high and low cut filter with the knee frequencies adjustable from the front panel knobs. It robs the bass from the tuner, regardless of the setting. I can hear the filter for the treble as well, but I had the tuner set up to FM Muting and the signal is strong enough, i don't have a noise problem. Because of the bass cut, I decided to keep this circuit disabled.
(4) The expander is noticeable. You set it so the front panel LED turns on and off with the volume of the signal. I can really hear it... mostly you notice the loud levels do get louder while the soft levels don't change. It's very obvious. Just to be on the safe side, I turned off my eyes, so I couldn't see the preamp settings, and turn on and off the EPL loop. Didn't count, so I didn't know what setting it was set to... so I sat down to listen.
As I toggled the remote to enable/disable the EPL loop, I could hear a difference, quite clear. I did listen in some 20 second intervals, so it gave me the opportunity to compare the same song ( many songs ). This time I counted as I was switching, but with my eyes closed, I did not know which was which. At some point, I decided that one of the setting did some a little bit louder on the peaks.. when I opened my eyes I noticed it was indeed the Phase Linear... the important thing is that the lows didn't sound louder. So, I guess the dynamic range was increased.
It does sound better. Quite subtle but it does the trick nicely.
Have not used it with the LP as a source, but, I doubt I need it.. because it does sound very quiet already... but, I guess I'll see if I can find a "noisy" LP and try that out.
GOING FORWARD
I got to see if I can clean out the dbx118.
After that I will take both to my guy and fully clean them out... might even change the opamp on the analog board of the Phase Linear.
Also, will look at the Pioneer units.
Here's the porno. The left most picture is how I left the foam so it puts some force sideways on the leftmost board.
