Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Lewm,

I think the two IC’s that are the hardest to find are the SC3042 and the TC5001 The rest of them are readily available today, Counters, Flip Flops, etc. I did a check on the third CMOS IC IC602 (C14046) that one is available even as a surface mount today.

As far as "designing" a replacement board, I think this is not feasible, of course for someone with a lot of time one his/her hands, it should be do able.

The replacement transistors for the ones used extensively in the TT101 2SA628A and 2SC711A I have replaced them with the Fairchild KSA992 and KSC1845 - they appear to be working as suitable replacements - although I still have several issues with the salvage TT101 I bought, more to follow on that.

Good Listening


Peter

PBNaudio,

I believe you mentioned Peter that among the DD tables you've restored your list included a SP-10 Mk2.  I have one which has been calibrated and seems to be functioning fine, but I'm pushing my luck by not yet having replaced all the electrolytic caps.  Now I believe Lewm said his tech replaced some diodes along with the electrolytics.  So for the benefit of Technics owners could you share if you found need to replace anything more than the caps?

Thanks

Dear Tim (Pryso),
Actually I myself re-capped my SP10 Mk2.  And I did not replace diodes or rectifiers, as the Mk2 had no problems ever.  (I sold it after purchasing the Mk3.) When I acquired the Mk3, I did turn that over to Bill Thalmann who re-capped it and calibrated it as well.  To my knowledge, he replaced no other parts, but considering the cost of his work in that instance, he may have replaced other parts.  Somewhere in there, Bill also replaced the main chip in my Denon DP80 and all its electrolytics, too. In the process, he noticed that the discrete transistors in the DP80 were of a type he knew to be unreliable and also inferior to a modern equivalent part.  He then took it upon himself to update all those transistors in the DP80.  This brings us to the TT101.  So far as I know, none of the diodes in the TT101 needed to be replaced.  One might go to Schottky diodes, simply because they are the lowest in noise, but I am never going to open up my TT101 again, so long as it is working.  I am so done with fretting.  If one were to change the diodes, the new ones would likely have a different forward voltage drop than the originals. This would result in a very slightly different output DC voltage from the PS. You'd need to re-calibrate the voltages, at a minimum.  Possibly, you'd have to recalibrate the motor as well.  It's not trivial to do that. JP's philosophy is if it's not broken, don't fix it.  I went along with that.

I was thinking last night that we collectively have made the world much safer for vintage DD turntables over the course of this thread.  We now know about Bill, Peter, and JP.  We know we can get most of the supposedly unobtainable ICs and discrete transistors for the major brands.  Thanks to Halcro for starting us on this journey.

Today I went to buy a Boston Audio Mat2 for my TT101, only to find that it is out of production.  What are guys using? I really like the Mat2 on my Mk3 and the Mat1 on my Lenco.

@lewm I use Micro CU-500 on my SP10 mk2
Where did you find BA Mat2 ? 

lewm
03-09-2016 4:43pm

JP’s philosophy is if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Let me add some color to that - my philosophy is if it’s not less than optimal, not prone to known reliability issues, etc. then don’t "fix" it.

My MN6042 upgrade wasn’t borne out of the need to replace failed parts, but due to the fact that every stock part I measured performed poorly.

chakster
03-09-2016 5:02pm

@lewm I use Micro CU-500 on my SP10 mk2
Where did you find BA Mat2 ?

I bought one new six months ago. I think it was somewhere around the 23rd page of a Google search I found a little online store in Italy that actually had one in stock. Sadly, their last one.