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Arcam 5 Mod Kit

john & Jake

john & Jake

Jake was smarter than me
hi,
After posting my vaious adventures with 5+ mods a fellow Pink Member, Zanash, offered to put a kit of parts together in order to upgrade the Arcam.
I have today received the kit and instuction manual and what a kit it is.
There are a lot more parts than I thought and some capacitor bypass modules already made up.
Shottky diodes Holco resistors. Starget and Oscon caps. Vaious op-amps and sockets for easy comparisons.
A new DIY mains lead fitted with good quality plugs and the materials to make a quality interconnect.
Damping material FBR for the case and enough for an isolating base for the player.
I'm still wading through the parts and with the book it's all making sense.

I'll do the mods in a planned way so that I can judge the improvements.
This way I will be able to better tailor the Arcam to my system ensuring the best match possible.

Thanks go to Zanash for all his work putting the kit together.

I'll keep you all posted with my progress.

dogrun.gif
 
Question for Jake, have you any of the original player left? it seems to me that the pair of you have been chasing your tails. Good luck with the results.
 
hi Rexel,
If you mean we've been going round in circles, no we havn't.
Some people say do the non oversampling mod one way, others another.
Until it was pointed out to me I didn't investigate another possibility. Now it is right. That's suck it and see(listen ) and eventually you get the result you're after.

Regarding my kit of parts.I've been soldering for 4 hours and I have done a few of the mods to the audio board.
Recapping, fitting bypass caps and op amps.
Just fired it up and eveythings fine, sounding very full( the standard Arcam is very thin)
Early days yet though. A listening session in the morning will reveal.

The basic design of the Arcam remains. It is well thought out but it is a mass produced player and so the "By hand" touches obviously haven't been done, this is where modding gains. Also the standard of parts used is just adequate, better parts rule.

dogrun.gif
 
Thanks for the kind words...........

The kit was a bit bigger than I anticipated so you got really good value ! Still I enjoyed putting it together, and whats more if anyone else wants the details or the write up every thing is at the press of a button. I have added a few caps and things that you may not use or need, also I've put more resistors in than you need...so you can play.

The power cable is only ok ! in that you can make better but it is better than the stock cord.

The Ic really deserves good plugs to get the best from it

Its good to hear you say the player is sounding fuller as that was the effect that I achieved with my Denon dcd920.....bigger deeper wide sound stage, more prat.

If anyone slse is intrested just drop me a pm and I'll get some detail to you.

Thanks again to John&jake for the impetus !
 
Zanash,

I've been quietly reading about this and other CDP modding with much interest. Starting to get curious about the potential that may be within my Planet 2K... Don't suppose you've come across one of these beasts and have any ideas for (simple!!!) mods???

Regards,

Stuart.
 
I can give you a number of generic mods but I'd need to have a schematic to get down to the nitty gritty component for component swaps. The rega's are well respected, but like many designs the economic constraints of the manufacturers will have effected there component choice. I look forward to hearing from you.
 
I tackled the fitting of the kit in Three stages.

First the caps, resistors and opamps.
As I said previosly the sound became noticibly bigger, fuller.
I then fitted the custom built capacitor modules in place of two large caps on the audio board regulator.
Now the player started to sing.
I've never used that much used term PRAT but now I was begining to hear.
Bass was dramaticly controlled now through the Bariks.

A test I use for this is Track 4 of Sharon Shannon's Out the Gap.
It has a pervading low instrument(don't think it is guitar) that has always gone way down, but a little overblown. Now it still goes way down but is as clean as a whistle with lots of detail mixed in there.

Step 3 was to fit Shottky diodes to the main board supply along with more custom cap modules.

Aother well known track I use as a test Floyds Money.( I know but it's a test). Only one word now GOOSEBUMPS ( sissy me, never).
Listening to Pink has never given me so much as it did this morning.
The parts haven't been run in yet, but it is doing somersaults on my rack.

Part selection in the kit is excellent, the Holco's keep the price down without sacrifice and the cap modules are a stroke of genius.
The opamps2 x OPA 640 and 2x OPA132 are a good choice. Starget caps with small Oscons for bypass as well as Wimas.
The parts list covers two pages. VFM
I haven't applied the foam damping from the kit yet nor made an isolation platform with the same material. More music to come I feel.

Sorry about what some will perceive as rounded descripions but improvements have to be heard and are tricky to convey.
The Arcam always was quite musical, this kit has built on that in spades.

The kit has managed to make the Arcam a stunning performer at a price of less than a third of what I could have paid for a modded one, these mods have paid off.
I have little soldering experience compared to other members but I found it easy and fun. The imformative manual helped immensly.
I can thoroughly recommend this kit to Pinks DIYers.

Members will know that when I'm pleased I allow jake to have fun, so here goes!
dc.gif
 
Thanks for the review.........

It will take about a week before things have settled in ........so expect to get even more from the beast !

Thank's again for the kind comments.
 
Hi Richard,
Do you have a copy of Out the Gap.
If so how does the bass on track 4 come across on your system.
And do you know what it is?

dogrun.gif
 
Yes, I have it (on CD).
Through my bog standard Marantz CD17/32.5/250/Shahinian Arcs it sounds good, plenty of tune down (very) low, but I have always thought the bass was a bit loud in the mix for the whole album on those tracks where it appears.

I think it will be the Electric Double Bass (from the instrument listing on the insert it would seem to be the only likely culprit, apart from anything else)

Drums
Electric Double Bass
Keys
Percussion
Acoustic Guitar
Sax
Accordeon

If you don't have the insert, I can scan you a copy if you like. PM me!

HTH!
 
Hi Zanash,

I wonder if you could send me (or post here) your list of generic mods.
I have a marantz cd40 (classic 7310 7220 1541 dac chain) and I'd like to compare your proposed mods with my own plans for this player.

TIA

Jim.
 
These are the 1000uf 35v C405 C406 C407 C207 C208,

and the 3300uf 25v C403.

The module were made up and soldered to vero board each containing a number of Elna Stargets and by pass caps 100uf 10uf 1uf stargets oscons and wimas.

location some are on the main board around the transformer and the others are on the top board.
 
Originally posted by RichardH

Through my bog standard Marantz CD17/32.5/250/Shahinian Arcs it....

Richard, as an "Inveterate Tinkerer", do you plan to do some tinkering with your Marantz? I run a CD17/2KI, again bog stock save for some pointy feet, and feel that it's about a gnat's wotsit away from being a really great player, if I could loosen it up a bit.

Output caps and a clock spring to mind...
Click to expand...
 
It's tempting - there's not too much documented on this player, and I'm most certainly a "monkey see monkey do" kind of tinkerer, rather than a creative engineer like many of the excellent visitors to this site.

I don't see the point in spending more on a different player, and it's way out of warranty, so if I find some guidelines I may well pop its case open.
 
Yes seen that, I don't wholly agree but He has his points.

There are a number of similar articles around the web. But you can't substitute tryingthem for your self. Also some of the damn things are hidiously expencive so in my opinion count them selve out straight away.
 
FWIW I did some work with Op amps in the early 90's, specifically for a low noise application, and discovered that the noise performance could become dramatically worse if good static handling precautions were not observed.

The devices appeared to continue to work in all other respects.
 
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