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Philips CD104/204 with external tube clock?!

Dowser

Dowser

Learning to bodge again..
After picking up a cheap CD50 from someone that had NOS'ed it and fitted back gates all over the place, but came without a TDA1541A...then spending ages fixing all the faults on it (cables mis-connected, laser ribbon not even connected, laser power VR o/c), I got into discussions with the seller. He had a lot of other Philips/Marantz vintage kit.

Collected today - highlights are a CD104 and CD204 modified to work with an external Abbas Audio clock. I was very skeptical, but price was good enough to hear, repair, resell.

See photos below - guy had glued crystal/glass all over the place, internal and external!

CD104 is heavily, heavily modified - all caps replaced with black gates, extra decoupling around TDA1540s, TDA1540s replaced with earlier ceramic versions, power supply heavily modified, etc, etc.

All wired up to accept an Abbas Audio external tube clock - how can that possibly work, it sounds like a stupid idea?

Sounds fantastic, but have not listened to my CDI for a few months now - back-back test on the cards. But first need to fix it - after 10 mins the left channel goes quiet. Need to investigate, will start with swapping the 1540s around.

Also got another CD204, also wired for external clock and NOS'ed - new caps, but not so heavily modified. Also sounds good with tube clock....but skips, need to work on servicing it's CDM1 mech I think.

ALso got a Marantz CD74 and Grundig 9000 as part of deal, not opened them yet.

Photos;

Crystallized....
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Removing the shit
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Hopefully I can remove this shit
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There's even glass inside!
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Black Gates all over the shop
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What are those little boards fitted to the regulators?
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Extra decoupling around TDA1540s
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Ceramic TDA1540Ds :)
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Fully recapped;
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External tube clock
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Also covered in glass/crystal
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External clock - looks like a stock crystal in there;
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Making music, very nice music, for 10 or 15 minutes...
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Anyone ever played with external clocks for CD players?

Thanks, Richard
 
Sell all the Black Gates. You'll make a fortune!

And sort the notorious griplets by drilling through and soldering a wire link from one side of the board to the other.
 
It looks like someone has removed the digital filter, if so it’s a really dumb thing to do but then so is sticking shiny bits of glass everywhere, so the signs were there.
 
Mike P said:
Sell all the Black Gates. You'll make a fortune!

And sort the notorious griplets by drilling through and soldering a wire link from one side of the board to the other.
Click to expand...

Griplets all done, amd done properly with a wire through. Work done on it is pretty professional.

a.palfreyman said:
"Sell all the Black Gates. You'll make a fortune!"
My thoughts exactly :)
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to do so, but a lot of hassle.

russel said:
It looks like someone has removed the digital filter, if so it’s a really dumb thing to do but then so is sticking shiny bits of glass everywhere, so the signs were there.
Click to expand...

yep - I think no the whole haul has been NOS‘ed - you know what, it still sounds great :)

Just fixed the cd104 - one channel going quiet after 10 mins was a faulty Burson v5i-d op-amp. I only had mc1458s available and easy to hand without digging through my cellar - perhaps sounds a little harder as a result, not sure that is a bad thing.

so, here we have an early 2nd gen machine, using and external tube powered clock…with at least 30cms between clock and cct- and unnecessary cable connections - it sounds ****ing excellent! Could easily live with it. But why?

i really need to get my CDI back in the system again and do some serious listening.

Did I mention I have a second faulty tube clock…strangely, same frequency as my CDI :D

oh, Question - what op-amps should I fit? I assume something is better than the mc1458s?

thanks, Richard
 
Now I’m lamenting I eventually skipped my CD104B. I suspect it had griplet-related issues, but there wasn’t any internet back in the 80s and I wanted a CD player that, you know, played CDs when I wanted it to rather than when it felt like it.
 
The external clock is nonsense, put it back in the case and give it a good local reg.

Is the Grundig philips cdm2?
 
Back in 2015 I had a 1984 Philips CD104 CD player (grey case) replaced in the 1990's when it persistently malfunctioned. It went on top of my wardrobe.

I did some research on the internet, it appears that most problems with this CD player result from "Griplets" a type of hollow rivet that goes through the double sided PCB joining the ground planes.
The "Griplets" fail, simply re-soldering does not work even if a meter shows continuity! as strongly suggested on various forums using a fine drill the "Griplets" identifiable as blobs of solder were drilled through then wires were pushed through and soldered on each side. This player has fixed signal/phono leads so a pair of my DIY leads were soldered in place, though we had chassis RCA sockets to hand this saved on soldered joints. All this work was done by my son at that time at technical college.

The result was even better than I remembered & functioned flawlessly.

The CD104 uses a TDA1540 DAC chip which is 14 bit when Philips discovered that Sony and others were coming to the market with 16 bit Players Philips pushed/forced it's engineers into adding oversampling in the guise of a SAA7030 error correction chip. My reading indicates a Non Oversampling (NOS) mod which involves de-soldering & removing the SAA7030 chip and adding a 1k resistor to an isolated leg on another chip to provide 5v to enable 14 bit's to be read, the result is worth the effort.

I bought from Ebay a "Nos re-clock circuit mounted on a 20 pin a side plugin chip socket for TDA1540 SAA7030 based dacs and players" ie not just the NOS mod by just removing the SAA7030 chip and soldering in 4 wires this apparently re-clocks the TDA1540 chips (x2).I still have the replacement for the CD104 a John Westlake designed Cambridge CD4 se and he rates it as one of his best. It is the only CD player I had at that time ever heard/liked under £1500 this modded CD104 probably edges it.

I bought a pristine CD104 off eBay, this CD104 even arrived in it's original cardboard box sold as defective ie not reading CD's. Having already modded my original Philips CD104 running in his own system, with my latest purchase John jnr. took about an hour to drill & wire through the "griplets" dismount the SAA7030 soldering in a 24 pin chip socket then plugging in the "non oversampling/re-clock circuit" off eBay. then reassembled.

Both of these CD 104's are still working beautifully, I now use the CD4 se as a transport with a DAC I bought last year, not necessarily better just a different presentation.

Unfortunately most of the pictures went when Photobucket started charging.

Some idea shown below

http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/MyEquipment/Listening/Projects/PhilipsNOS/PhilipsNonOversampling.htm
 
Certainly from what I've read about NOS, it starts to roll the output off from about 3kHz which should be audible. However I can't (and wouldn't) argue with your assessment.
 
a.palfreyman said:
"Sell all the Black Gates. You'll make a fortune!"
My thoughts exactly :)
Click to expand...

I just checked the sold prices on eBay, how can people pay so much for used caps?!

I guess I'm swapping them all out with other decent brands and reselling them - there's 26 Black Gates alone in the CD104...5 of the 7 players have similar :D

Richard
 
a.palfreyman said:
Go for it. Will pay a big chunk of your 'investment' off. Don't flood the market too quickly though. :D
Click to expand...

I suspect it will push me into profit, except of course I'll need to purchase new caps - I normally Panasonic low esr, any other recommendations? For the lower value & small decouplers, I'll just use films I think.
 
russel said:
so is sticking shiny bits of glass everywhere, so the signs were there.
Click to expand...
Those were Reiki crystals! I'm sure this CDPs aura will be ruined now, you might be messing with tech that you don't understand :-s

Perhaps try putting the crystals in a wooden box with some copper plate attached to an earthing point

gfaw
 
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