Marantz CD63 & CD67 mods list

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#14,403
I have a 63 KI Sig, am on a limited budget, my question is: If you could only do 1 mod to the CDP which one woould it be and why.

I am thinking of going Burson Clock.

Cheapest would obviously be to bypass the HDAM, but without any other mods would this be an improvement.
 
#14,413
batty said:
I have a 63 KI Sig, am on a limited budget, my question is: If you could only do 1 mod to the CDP which one woould it be and why.

I am thinking of going Burson Clock.

Cheapest would obviously be to bypass the HDAM, but without any other mods would this be an improvement.
Click to expand...

If your player is still virgin, there are plenty of freebie mods that will lift the player 🙂

Personally, i'd bypass the output caps (elna silmic accross the back near the output phono's) and the output muting transistors first. You'd take the output from the HDAM direct to the phono out. I'd not remove the HDAM until i'd changed the output opamps to something like LM4562MA (or LME47920HA) and got some decent decouling caps on there (Rubycon ZA or similar @220uF). This upgrade will cost less than £20 possibly less in the UK.

The best single improvement for this player would be to get a seperate low noise reg on the analogue dac. This means isolating the supply (which can be done by lifting a wire link on the PCB) and giving the analogue supply to the DAC its own reg. I'd also replace the 4 decoupling caps on the DAC with somethin similar to the above at the same time. This upgrade would cost somewhere around £50.

Then i'd go for a clock 🙂 In this player, you can clock both the DAC and the servo. Given that the servo run's at half the clock speed (16.934Mhz/8.46Mhz) I'd make sure you have a clock capable of putting out both for best VFM. Although Burson opamps are awesome, they don't make the best VFM clocks imho.

With a few caps, opamps, analogue DAC reg and clock on dac/servo and the HDAM, DC blocking caps & muting transistors bypassed you will have a player that will beat any new £1000 player 😛

Check out the list in the first couple of pages. Ray lists the components for much more detailed upgrades in the various areas.

That should be enough for information overload 😛

Ian
 
#14,414
Sorry to disagree a little Ian but I think the one single mod that's most important is regulating the servo driver op-amps. The easiest way is to buy 3 x 7808 and 3 x 7908 and install them directly on the board near the chips powered from the original +-10V rails. Low dropout regs would be a wise choice. The improvement in smoothness and bass quality is very significant indeed. The cost is negligible.

Totally agree the DAC analogue rail is pretty important too, but perhaps slightly less important.

Simon
 
#14,417
SimontY said:
Sorry to disagree a little Ian but I think the one single mod that's most important is regulating the servo driver op-amps. The easiest way is to buy 3 x 7808 and 3 x 7908 and install them directly on the board near the chips powered from the original +-10V rails. Low dropout regs would be a wise choice. The improvement in smoothness and bass quality is very significant indeed. The cost is negligible.

Totally agree the DAC analogue rail is pretty important too, but perhaps slightly less important.

Simon
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My only issue is that this mod is not proved to work in every case (so I am led to believe), maybe due to the voltage headroom????. As you say, they'd need to be LDO. Personally I cannot comment because I've never tried it (although I did buy the regs to do it ages ago!!).
 
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#14,419
Hello chaps, happy doesn't cover it!! The work Simon has done is really excellent and I consider myself most fortunate to have a player of this quality. It annihilated my Pioneer PD-S707 and Marantz CD67 and CD65DX. Great thread and thanks to all who have pitched in.
 
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