Denon Blues

Lazarus Short

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#1
I suppose some members here at Phoenix have heard my tale of fixing the transport on my DCD-3300. I had it powered up for months, and the other day I powered it down overnight, for no particular reason but that I powered down my amp while installing another set of speakers. Powered up again, there was noise in the right channel. I switched to the tuner, which was clean, so it was not the amp or the speakers. I tried headphones, and the noise was still there in the right channel. I tried the digital output into a DAC/headphone amp, and it was clean.

The noise must be in the analog section, but a visual inspection did not reveal anything obvious. It is probably a cap gone bad, since this unit dates to May of 1987, so it looks like the Denon will be doing transport duty from here on.
 

J!m

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#2
Most vintage players have far better transports than their modern counterparts, but much worse converter sections.

Using it for a transport is a great idea. It will probably run another 20 years, if not longer.
 

Lazarus Short

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#3
A local guy, a member of a local FB audio group, offered to recap it for me. I'm not too keen on it.
 

Skywavebe

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#4
I am not saying this is his case but I have a RT-909 that was recapped by that guy on E bay and he broke more foils on the board than did good as now the thing does not work even with the fancy caps he put into it. It is good to get rid of old caps but make sure you do not get a bull in a china shop cap changer. I have done many decks without damaging the foil patterns but after a period of time you learn how. Excessive heat and rough removal is what you do not want.
 

Lazarus Short

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#5
Success! I connected the Denon's digital out to my Zhaolu D2.5 DAC, connected that to my Yamaha M-35 amp (cause it was handy) and connected that to my modded Genesis speakers. Most of the time was involved in preparing the speaker wire, Audioquest 2. The setup is sweet, and I had never listened to the Genesis in a regular stereo configuration before, as my choices in a shop situation are limited. Anyway, thanks to all for comments, and it looks like the Denon is going to serve for years to come.
 

Lazarus Short

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#8
An update:

The rig I had described in my last post turned out to be a bust: it was screechy. Maybe it was just because there was a lot of fiddle music on the particular CD, but I decided to see if I could tone it down. First, I made up new speaker cables from some scraps I had lying around, multi-stranded stuff about the opposite of the four-strands-of-solid-core of the Audioquest Type 2 cables. I replaced the Yamaha M-35 with the Cyrus 2. Much better! As icing on the cake, I put the Musical Fidelity X-10 v3 between the DAC and the amp. For the first time, I heard the X-10 make a difference: it made the music sound more "real." I'm pleased.
 
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