Pioneer DV-45A

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

I just bought one of these yesterday and I have been blown away by it. This unit is so convenient and the regular CD section is awsome and unbeatable at two to three times its price IMHO. Then it has both SACD and DVD Audio to boot! Opened up the unit last night for a peek to see what can be done to in the way of power supply and capacitors. Fortunately, all that seems to be pretty accessable while the main brubt of the circuitry is on two other PCB's. One large on top, and underneath it one for both SACD and Dolby Digital/DTS decoding. Then there is a large motherboard that contains extra voltage regulators and coupling caps. Anyone had any experience upgrading this unit?
Mark

[Ric Schultz]

I am doing mods on these machines. They are a bit cramped to work on but if you are serious, you can get really good sound out of it. You should get the service manual from Pioneer (1-800-Pioneer) and start tinkering. The output board with the DACs and output stage is unfortunetly under the mother board so, you cannot put big parts on the output board. But if you are careful, you can modify it to great success. You can see my website for some details but I am not going to tell you much more than what you see there. tease, tease. Basically, I'm saying "Go for it". It has great potential. Website: www.tweakaudio.com

Have fun,

Ric Schultz