Marantz CD63 & CD67 mods list

[RCruz]

There might be room for improvements here !

To regulate the drivers, can I place +-9v regs on R149 and R150 ?

[SimontY]

I would use +-8V myself as there's not really enough voltage headroom for +-9V. Furthermore, one of these chips can be fussy with -8V; YMMV.

If, however, you only have 9V regs then give it a go, you can't break it(!)

Simon

[Malefoda]

What?? No coax mod and now no drivers reg?? Ricardo, you are missing the big fishes! Do a 317/337 at 7..7.5V, then a normal cap 100/220µF not more.
Look for Glenn's picture and re-routing of positive rail. (among his last posts).

Matthieu

[RCruz]

Hi Matthieu

I see you know what I have here

I am much more confident now so probably I will start with the servo regs and follow with the coax.

It will be a major mod so I will also replace the dreadfull white ribbon (and connectors) by a soldered professional ribbon I got from a Friend a long time ago

Also, this revisit made me realyze I overdid some aspects in the several PSU´s...... So much to do.....

Ricardo

[RCruz]

Originally Posted by RCruz

While I was hands on the iron, I replaced the 500000u // C815 by a much smaller 10000u BHC that fits inside the case.

After serious listening sessions I consider this to be a major upgrade.

The sound is much more integrated, bass much more detailed with great differentiation of instrument´s tone (Big mudled bass is gone).

[studiostevus]

During my lasts upgrades, I have damaged the ribbon cable to the transport a bit (one of the metal strips on the connecting bit of the cable is letting lose). The player still works, but I can't do any work on it anymore, out of fear it will be its last.

Does anyone have a solution, or a place where I can get a replacement?

[Thomo]

Originally Posted by studiostevus

During my lasts upgrades, I have damaged the ribbon cable to the transport a bit (one of the metal strips on the connecting bit of the cable is letting lose). The player still works, but I can't do any work on it anymore, out of fear it will be its last.

Does anyone have a solution, or a place where I can get a replacement?

You can hard-wire it with some ribbon, or if you email me lee -at- diyhi-fi -dot-co-uk I'll send you one from my old busted up for spares player.

Cheers, Lee.

[UV101]

Originally Posted by RCruz

After serious listening sessions I consider this to be a major upgrade.

The sound is much more integrated, bass much more detailed with great differentiation of instrument´s tone (Big mudled bass is gone).

Is this due to much lower ESR in the new cap or was the 50000uF of similar quality?

If you want to retain the high capacitance you could try 2 in parallel??

[SimontY]

Probably not lower ESR than a 500 000uF gives lol.

People sometimes say massive caps can put out noise and do more harm than good. And the long leads would've made the real ESR quite high probably.

Simon

[SimontY]

Well I decided to finally try output transformers so I could make my own mind up on how they sound. I used a couple of Lundahl LL1527 connected directly to RO, RON and LO, LON. I wired both sets of windings in parallel and directly to some extra RCA sockets (insulated). One output becomes ground.

The sound is good and bad, I have to say. I am comparing to 4562 op-amps + HDAM (-muting, -caps, all Silmics decoupling). The sound is much less harsh, much smoother, and there's a certain magic in there but it's struggling to fully emerge. It is just a bit laid back to the point of sounding lazy and lost and a touch flat. There's also quite a lot of noise when turned up but I probably need to move a power supply wire out of the way to deal with that.

I might try the transformers connected after the first op-amp next and see if that has a better rounded mixture of sonic attributes.

Simon