Marantz CD63 & CD67 mods list

After modding a Marantz CD63 and a CD67OSE I decided to make a list of all the various mod's I found here and elsewhere on the internet.
I'd like to donate my files to this forum, for all to enjoy! :D

Of course I do not pretend this list to be complete. :whazzat:
This is all I've done to the players so far and more good tips are welcome!

Greetings,

Ray.

Hi Ray,

I have visisted your website and noticed you are very knowleadgeable about these Marantz CD Players.

I have been given a Marantz CD Player from a close deceased relative that doesnt work, and this is my first time trying to fix a CD Player. Im not interested in buying a new one, I actually would like to fix this one since it belonged to a relative and I inherited it.

When loading a disc, the disc does not spin and never plays. Service mode gives error ERR 02.

When going through the various servicre modes (P00,P01 etc) the disc does spin, so at least the motor is OK.

I have checked power supply and all seems fine.

I have also replaced the optical laser assembly but it made no difference.

Does anyone have any advice on that to look for?

Thank you very much!
 
Muiting relay Marantz CD-53 CD-63

Hi i'm from Italy and that's my first post here on DIYaudio. I'd like to ask you a question about Marantz CD-53 muting mods. I decided to remove the muting transistors on the output (after having had some problems, sight and their criticality on the sound path) and to replace them with a nice double relay. I was there for a while to study the possible circuit, because the idea was to "integrate the relay on the board" without making too many changes. Well I succeeded and everything works regularly (or almost). There is only a small problem, actually negligible, but not much for me who are a fussy eater like few :) :D
Specifically, when muting is active (so the relay is off and the NC contacts bring the RCA output to ground), a rather weak whistle in the range of 500-1000hz can be heard from the speakers, and also from the headphone output. . When muting is deactivated after a few seconds from turning on the CD player (relay energized and audio outputs open), everything is PERFECTLY silent and the player's playback is perfect. No whistling was heard before the mods.
I am attaching parts of the CD player schematics with the changes I made.
What do you think it can depend on? I have done a series of measurements and tests but I have not solved my problem. If I turn off the power just to the OPAMP everything is perfectly MUTE and you don't even hear the famous whistle.
Does this make me deduce that it may be a whistle that is amplified by OPAMPs? But why just and only with the relay OFF?
It is also difficult to think that it is a whistle introduced on the ground plane by the switching of the relay coil, since the hiss is heard ONLY when the muting is active or that the coil is de-energized (OFF). In reality, however, it is not entirely true because perhaps there is also a problem on the sizing of the resistors RN29 and RN30 that drive the relay transistor: when the relay is OFF I measure a drop on the relay of almost 3 volts (when my project had to be 0 ) and relay ON I regularly measure 11-12 volts. Could this be the cause of the whistle?
As BJT relay driver I used one of the muting transistors which I removed from the outputs (2sc2878). I also tried with a BC550, always NPN, but nothing has changed. The whistle was always present.
Ideas?
Thanks a lot Ivan

P.S (In red marks my muting mods)
 

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Hi Ray,

I have visisted your website and noticed you are very knowleadgeable about these Marantz CD Players.

I have been given a Marantz CD Player from a close deceased relative that doesnt work, and this is my first time trying to fix a CD Player. Im not interested in buying a new one, I actually would like to fix this one since it belonged to a relative and I inherited it.

When loading a disc, the disc does not spin and never plays. Service mode gives error ERR 02.

When going through the various servicre modes (P00,P01 etc) the disc does spin, so at least the motor is OK.

I have checked power supply and all seems fine.

I have also replaced the optical laser assembly but it made no difference.

Does anyone have any advice on that to look for?

Thank you very much!

Assuming that the lens is working (if it is a 10 euro lens from amazon / ebay in some cases it can get broken as it happened to me, or make sure you have removed the antistatic protection) You should start by checking the operation of Q105 and Q106 (TCA0372) and check all voltages that correspond to the service manual
 
The laser of a new player is always younger than that of the old timer. But the selection of new models to buy is not that wide any more and these are not too cheap either.

Modding the old timer can give you surprising results - you can start modestly from the analogue output stage and if improvement comes around start working towards the "front end",
 
Thanks. I will keep it and look into mods like opamps, bypass hdam and low jitter clock.
First a new belt for the tray. It was probably why i found it in the dumpster, many years ago.




On looking low jitter clocks seem to be very expensive now compared to a few years ago.


If you're electronically minded there are circuit diagrams out there to build your own for cost of parts like the Kwak Clock 7. (I made my own from the Kwak Clock 7 diagram)



There is a Dutch guy on this thread somewhere who has/had his own site selling kits.
 
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Joined 2004
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Before playing with modifications, service the transport and align it.

About the only thing I can see that will make a real difference is to make certain the power supply is clean. It already has a quartz crystal and other upgrades really won't affect that too much unless there is something wrong with the crystal or circuit.

All that matters for the crystal, or "clock" is short term stability. Any normal drift from the exact frequency will be too small to hear, and only frequency jumps will affect the data coming out. The jitter from existing clocks used in these machines is tiny. Many sellers of clock circuits will strongly disagree with me on this, but I have a $30,000 "Frequency and Time Analyzer" that begs to differ. It's an HP 5372A - look it up. High stability time base option, and I can give it my GPS ref in for absolute frequency accuracy.

If your transport and power supplies aren't working well, anything else you do is a pure waste of money.

-Chris
 
Thanks for your quick reply Chris, draw was sticking a bit when first arrived but think that the grease on mechanism got cold in transit, was fine after opening and closing a few times, reading and playing disks fine, I've been playing my longest cds to the end and no sign of skipping. I did have it open and fitted an IEC socket on the cable so I can use a decent power cord. I didn't have the transport out but did clean up excess grease on underside of tray with a that I saw and spread it along the tracks with a cotton wool bud. I do have some some molykote em grease on order I thought I might need but not sure I do. For now i decided to leave it as is as all is working.
What else should I do with transport to service it ? and what do I need to check on power supply side?
I have basic electrical skills but know my way around a multi meter and soldering iron and I'm fairly comfortable with changing caps. Thinking I'll add some damping material to case and maybe the transport?
Visually inside it all looked good to me, clean and no sign of damaged caps.
 
I personally would recommend adding a clock, preferably with it's own dedicated power supply if you do nothing to improve the existing power supplies.
I modified a cd67 as per Thorsten Loesch/TNT website I noticed the sound improvements after all the modifications, but still didn't really enjoy the music until I added a separate clock tapping into the existing power supply.
 
Hi all,
I buggered a CD-63SE today.
It wasn't reading CDs so I put in a VAM1202. That went flawlessly, and everything was nice and well, so I thought I'd desolder the Op Amps and put in a socket, buy a set of Burson opamps and slap them in.

Big mistake.
First of all I accidentally bought singles. So they fit in with no drama, as did the sockets. No sound. Realising my mistake I took them out and put in the original Op Amps, all is well.

Except not quite. While reassembling the player, I buggered the Flat flex ribbon cable between the main board and the front panel. Absolutely destroyed the pins I must have somehow, because the display was quite scrambled, and I could barely make out what it was saying, but for all intents and purposes it was playing just fine.

My mistake was then unseating it and reseating it, which properly broke the display. And now my player was skipping tracks, playing a few seconds, jumping to another track, ejecting my CD, spitting what I think were error codes, I'm not sure. Any case I believe I haven't fried anything except the ribbon cable.

I tried a few things and eventually just gave up because the ribbon was far too fragile and fickle. For the records, the FFC is a Sumitomo-S, AWM 2896, 1.25mm pitch 37-pin cable. Non-inverted. I tried to buy an identical part, but exhaustive searches brought up nothing. The closest I found was in Aliexpress, AWM 20624 1.25mm pitch 40-pin. If they ever arrive my intention was to cut 3 pins off and try to fit it in, but I honestly don't see this succeeding.

Some posts here seem to suggest that some users have hard-wired the front panel to the main board - does anyone know what cable I should use for the job? I think this is a far better, more future-proof approach.

Cheers!
 
Hi all,
I buggered a CD-63SE today.
It wasn't reading CDs so I put in a VAM1202. That went flawlessly, and everything was nice and well, so I thought I'd desolder the Op Amps and put in a socket, buy a set of Burson opamps and slap them in.

Big mistake.
First of all I accidentally bought singles. So they fit in with no drama, as did the sockets. No sound. Realising my mistake I took them out and put in the original Op Amps, all is well.

Except not quite. While reassembling the player, I buggered the Flat flex ribbon cable between the main board and the front panel. Absolutely destroyed the pins I must have somehow, because the display was quite scrambled, and I could barely make out what it was saying, but for all intents and purposes it was playing just fine.

My mistake was then unseating it and reseating it, which properly broke the display. And now my player was skipping tracks, playing a few seconds, jumping to another track, ejecting my CD, spitting what I think were error codes, I'm not sure. Any case I believe I haven't fried anything except the ribbon cable.

I tried a few things and eventually just gave up because the ribbon was far too fragile and fickle. For the records, the FFC is a Sumitomo-S, AWM 2896, 1.25mm pitch 37-pin cable. Non-inverted. I tried to buy an identical part, but exhaustive searches brought up nothing. The closest I found was in Aliexpress, AWM 20624 1.25mm pitch 40-pin. If they ever arrive my intention was to cut 3 pins off and try to fit it in, but I honestly don't see this succeeding.

Some posts here seem to suggest that some users have hard-wired the front panel to the main board - does anyone know what cable I should use for the job? I think this is a far better, more future-proof approach.

Cheers!

It sounds like your solution of cutting down a 40-pin cable would probably work, did you get chance to try it? (you'd only need to cut it down on each end).

Alternatively, if it's the front panel playing up, parts CD43/53/63s go for dirt cheap on eBay a lot of the time, and might be worth just switching the whole front panel over for the hassle.

Pretty much reached a point where I'd call my CD53/63KI finished - 2 Flea clocks with their own power supplies plus Ray's full mod list and other stuff - and it sounds wonderful, convinced it's been getting better with more use. Only thing I wanted to do was shield some ICs as a clock is mounted right on top of the CPU, and the clock transformers are very basic ones I built myself so I'm sure an upgrade there could be worthwhile. My attempts at clocking the decoder last time were unsuccessful so could also give that a try.
 
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Joined 2006
Paid Member
Hi Ray
Hope you are doing well during these difficult times.

I recently bought a SONY CDP 339ES that uses a CXD2562Q dac... it is in very good condition and sounds "honest" but it is way below my highly modded CD53 that uses a DOS.

I would like to implement the DOS in the SONY.... can it be done with the stock DOS circuit ?

Best

Ricardo