Midi sized so it fits in the limited space, 1986 vintage, it has a TDA 1541 DAC in it and sounds rather nice as it is. It can be abit harsh at times, but has something to it that I like.
I've been in conversation with a chap called Mark recently who also likes these and has 2. While discussing these players the subject of mods came up, and I have long thought that the cd player could be improved fairly easily. Swap out the op amps and recap, basic work that would probably make a noticeable difference to the player. There are loads of pages all over the place on modding early cd players, but no consensus anywhere on what to do and what not to do.
Having done some research, it seems that my initial thoughts on recapping and replacing the op amps are what people recommend as a good start.
Mark has sent me one of his spare players to act as a base to compare with once I start, with a view to modding his once I've done what I'm going to do with it if it does improve.
The internals are nicely laid out, the sub board I've moved I presume is the driver board for the display and controls
![Image](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4349/37221669931_26dd303026_c.jpg)
That lovely old DAC chip with a collection of caps around it, some that are looking abit bulged on the tops and rather sorry for themselves
![Image](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4377/37192221832_ff3352297e_c.jpg)
The output stage where again the caps look pretty worse for wear...... and the lm833n op amps that I'm sure can be replaced with a better sounding pair, and I presume the 2 transistors are the muting transistors which apparently is a good idea to take out for some reason that I'm not entirely clear on
![Image](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4420/37192221892_169d10964d_c.jpg)
And the power supply section. The large caps look ok, the small ones again look abit bulgy so are probably better off replaced.
![Image](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4429/37174261906_074e5dfd54_c.jpg)
Some folks have also recommended replacing the diodes with shottkys, again, I'm not clear as to why as I've never used them, to me a diode is a diode is a diode. p'raps someone can explain.
The first part of the plan is to replace all the electrolytics with elna simlic 2 or cerafines. Simply because I like the elnas when I've used them on amps before but suggestions are welcome. I need to identify the output caps and their values too and decide what to replace them with, I quite like the TAD paper in oil caps in the valve amps so i'll look into that. Part 2 is to replace the 2 op amps with something better, again suggestions are welcome on the type, and see what that does when compared with Marks standard one. I took a look at the clock which is an 11.2896mhz clock, and there is plenty of free space to put a low jitter replacement clock in it if I want to.
All suggestions are welcome, I've not modded a cd player in years apart from putting some black gates in an arcam black box 3 dac years ago so I'm pretty rusty on all things digital.
cheers ant