A while back, a friend was clearing out some old electronics and invited me over to take whatever I liked. Some crusty old cassette decks and other ‘70s crappy stuff....and a PL3600! According to the rear panel, this was the Jensen era stuff. Not nearly as well appointed as the prior generation stuff, but hey...it did say “Phase Linear” on it. I made a list of electrolytics back then and finally incorporated them into a Mouser shopping cart. Changed out the mouse chewed power cord while the covers were off. I noticed the two “ribbon cables” were a significant design “enhancement” over other generations, as was the enhanced turntable EQ section. MC and MM inputs with selectable capacitance loading was very cool.
So I noticed the larger ribbon cable had delaminated and since I wasn’t sure of the wire integrity, I unsoldered all 29 (x2 ends) of that cable and tried sourcing some modern-day alternative. Found what actually worked in an Arduino wire kit I had...complete with male 2.5mm spaced connectors on each end. Soldered those in place of the old ribbons, Nichicon electrolytics swapped in, replaced the op-amps with same numbers since I already had them and powered it on. Sounds great!
My buddy had a note taped to it that the right channel crapped out, which is why he dumped it ... might have been that faulty ribbon cable.
Has anybody else worked on one of these? not a commonly found box on ebay. I searched the forums but found only comments regarding the phono preamp section.
So I noticed the larger ribbon cable had delaminated and since I wasn’t sure of the wire integrity, I unsoldered all 29 (x2 ends) of that cable and tried sourcing some modern-day alternative. Found what actually worked in an Arduino wire kit I had...complete with male 2.5mm spaced connectors on each end. Soldered those in place of the old ribbons, Nichicon electrolytics swapped in, replaced the op-amps with same numbers since I already had them and powered it on. Sounds great!
My buddy had a note taped to it that the right channel crapped out, which is why he dumped it ... might have been that faulty ribbon cable.
Has anybody else worked on one of these? not a commonly found box on ebay. I searched the forums but found only comments regarding the phono preamp section.