Malefoda
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2009
- Posts
- 55
- Likes
- 8
Hi there,
happy owner of this famous Discman, using it more these days main CDP waiting for parts) and being used to good sound I wanted to get more out of it, both the line out (listening to it right now) and the headphone out, used with a Grado MS-1(000). Right now it does not skip and I'll not mess with pots until that happens. I've tried lubrictaing it from outside, in worst case it did nothing but it could also have reached the bearings... I'm not too proud of the qualtiy of work, not as clean as I wanted.
As for mods, here we go with spare parts, Rubycon ZLG, Panasonic FC, FM, PPS. Bought some Evox Rifa MMK big caps, they happen to fit nicely in the extension housing for Sony's batteries. As for other coupling caps, I've used some Panasonic smd film caps, very expensive PPS caps, but they are as good as MKP, very rewarding! All are 0.47µF, they were sleeping in a drawer anyway...
First I've sandpapered the big film caps to make them slimer therefore get in easlily. They seem to be the only good sounding caps to fit there!
Power supplies: removed the electrolytics caps to check what can get in, in fact not much, I don't have low profile caps so I need some lead bending. Yes, adding lead lenght is bad, but replacing cheap and old caps with some top and new ones is better. Caps at the DC adpater's plug are very hard to change, the space is at minimum there, I did not. The Dac analog is now a 150µF ZLG, the ceramic at Dac's analog pins is now a PPS also. Added a PPS cap at the headamp power pin to a local ground, as the power cap, a tantalum, is too far away, several cms.
I've used Sano OsCon SP at the Dac digital and Decoder IC.
Coupling caps are Pannasonic FC, 330µF, by passed with PPS again. 2x 0.47µF in PPS caps also used in // prior to the headamp as coupling caps, instead of the 1µF tantalum.
The MMK are the direct Dac's output caps, before line-out and headamp. They were film caps there, bypassing tants, those film caps were very nice, 0.047µF and MKT seems. These big MMK are bypassed with... yes, PPS
at 0.47µF they do the sound, more than the MMK.
Sorry I haven't take pics of the PPS and bottom side, will if I need to re-open the case, for instance if I change the op amp.
But I need to say that it's quite hard to do, pcb tracks at the output stage are hair thin, and i did damage some sadly. Fixing it is a pain...
Was it worth it? Well the coupling caps may have do the main impact, but as I was there... yes, it's worth it if you like to take risk, have time to waste, can afford PPS caps, have good eyes... but if you ask me to do it again I'll mabye just use PPS to bypass stock caps but the output one changed for smaller ones in package size I mean.
Worth in what? it's cleaner, bass is deeper and tighter but mainly highs are superb. Dynamic is not much improved, I wanted more here. Maybe I just need to remind it's a PCDP... only a PCDP. Well, I don't need an amp or anything, that's a very very good portable CDP, even a nice home player.
Matthieu
happy owner of this famous Discman, using it more these days main CDP waiting for parts) and being used to good sound I wanted to get more out of it, both the line out (listening to it right now) and the headphone out, used with a Grado MS-1(000). Right now it does not skip and I'll not mess with pots until that happens. I've tried lubrictaing it from outside, in worst case it did nothing but it could also have reached the bearings... I'm not too proud of the qualtiy of work, not as clean as I wanted.
As for mods, here we go with spare parts, Rubycon ZLG, Panasonic FC, FM, PPS. Bought some Evox Rifa MMK big caps, they happen to fit nicely in the extension housing for Sony's batteries. As for other coupling caps, I've used some Panasonic smd film caps, very expensive PPS caps, but they are as good as MKP, very rewarding! All are 0.47µF, they were sleeping in a drawer anyway...
First I've sandpapered the big film caps to make them slimer therefore get in easlily. They seem to be the only good sounding caps to fit there!
Power supplies: removed the electrolytics caps to check what can get in, in fact not much, I don't have low profile caps so I need some lead bending. Yes, adding lead lenght is bad, but replacing cheap and old caps with some top and new ones is better. Caps at the DC adpater's plug are very hard to change, the space is at minimum there, I did not. The Dac analog is now a 150µF ZLG, the ceramic at Dac's analog pins is now a PPS also. Added a PPS cap at the headamp power pin to a local ground, as the power cap, a tantalum, is too far away, several cms.
I've used Sano OsCon SP at the Dac digital and Decoder IC.
Coupling caps are Pannasonic FC, 330µF, by passed with PPS again. 2x 0.47µF in PPS caps also used in // prior to the headamp as coupling caps, instead of the 1µF tantalum.
The MMK are the direct Dac's output caps, before line-out and headamp. They were film caps there, bypassing tants, those film caps were very nice, 0.047µF and MKT seems. These big MMK are bypassed with... yes, PPS
at 0.47µF they do the sound, more than the MMK.Sorry I haven't take pics of the PPS and bottom side, will if I need to re-open the case, for instance if I change the op amp.
But I need to say that it's quite hard to do, pcb tracks at the output stage are hair thin, and i did damage some sadly. Fixing it is a pain...
Was it worth it? Well the coupling caps may have do the main impact, but as I was there... yes, it's worth it if you like to take risk, have time to waste, can afford PPS caps, have good eyes... but if you ask me to do it again I'll mabye just use PPS to bypass stock caps but the output one changed for smaller ones in package size I mean.
Worth in what? it's cleaner, bass is deeper and tighter but mainly highs are superb. Dynamic is not much improved, I wanted more here. Maybe I just need to remind it's a PCDP... only a PCDP. Well, I don't need an amp or anything, that's a very very good portable CDP, even a nice home player.
Matthieu
