Marantz CD63 & CD67 mods list

Hi guys, how are things over here?

Been away for a while for more important matters. Here's the result: :D
 

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Congratulations Ray!

LOL @ Simon

Servo amps - I used LM317/337 at 7.5V and never had my player skip a beat, infact it tracked better after (quicker to lock onto track) but I may have imagined it. Bear in mind you have to do a bit of re-routing of the power lines for one of them. You have to isolate a track from one of the big caps to one of the amps and connect it the other side, then you can remove a jumper for your new reg input/output. It should be clear looking at the service manual layout.

The amps only output 5V signals and if you use 7-7.5V regs that's enough overhead for amp and regulator, i.e., 10V-->7V-->5V.
 
Bottle-fed I hope? (as a valve/tube man...)

Regards to the track re-routing;

1) Remove U234, U161 and U237 shown in red to isolate the drivers from the raw supplies.
2) Insert -ve reg at U234 (use holes as input and output)
3) Insert +ve reg at either U161 or U237 (use holes as input and output
4) Connect blue wire as shown (you can use any colour :) )

Simples.
 

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...aaaaand moving back on topic.

What have people's experiences been in removing the last traces of hard/harsh sound sound from the CD63? The question assumes you've achieved that, so most will not be able to answer this.

I find Steve's player still just has a slight bit of grit to the upper midrange and treble. It has 13 extra regulators wired directly to their consumers, upgraded caps in most places, HDAM/muting/caps bypass and HA tin hat op-amps, C1 clock on DAC, a ~80VA transformer supplying DAC/decoder/servo analogue pins, the usual chassis damping.

All that remains are low noise regs, servo re-clock and maybe a better output stage. Thoughts anyone?

Simon

ps - when I used a CD63KI as my main player it didn't have this problem, but I seem to recall the output stage helped to cure it.
 
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I know there are a few other little tweeks that could lift things.

Examples: C505 - the HF signal goes through a ceramic cap. That should be a silver mica or at least polystyrene I'd guess.

The 10k resistors in the output filter could be matched or 0.1% items used. I might try that on my current test machine. The polyester filter caps could be changed for polystyrene, polypropylene, teflon or silver mica.

I am going to try output coupling transformers too, and I know changing the naff old sockets lifts some dirt off the sound.

There are always more power supplies to add too.