Archive for the ‘Marantz CD-65 r&r’ Category
Marantz CD-65 r&r
This Marantz CD player is very similar to PHILIPS cd players from the same times. In fact Marantz used PHILIPS components, almost everything related to CD in the 80’s was made by PHILIPS.
As a plus Marantz added a digital output and a nice headphone stage with volume control, still keeping that fantastic classic look.
This unit uses CDM2/10 cd mechanism, I feel a little bad not having the mighty CDM1 wich is known as the best cd mechanism in the world.
It’s ok beacause CD-65 was released in mid 80’s so the “plastic era” was fully present.
Anyway it is a high quality product made in Belgium wich needed almost no service for 30 years.
Problems of the unit were: display flicker, random skipping, hard to make it work when first powered on, it needed 5 minutes of warm-up until I could listen to music.One day it decided not to read anything anymore so a repair was needed.
This cd player sounds so good that doesn’t deserve to die in my opinion.
First thing in mind was that the laser was almost dead but after a closer look, few replaced components, few hours of work, worked like in the first day.
First step was purchasing a service manual wich covers all schematics and the test mode settings.
Bringing the cd player in test mode showed that even the first step(focusing) couldn’t be performed, though laser beam was present.
I replaced all IC coupling capacitors. I was amazed how dead were the old caps, some had only 10% of their rated capacity.Age is age.
All boards were resoldered as much as it was possible after they were analysed.
After cleaning the lens, I recalibrated the laser power as it was a litlle off, this is a very good thing for the life of the laser.
The old wiring had problems, not all connectors , I found only one connector with problems and I recrimped original wires.
main motor lubed, unit ready for tests:
I would like to thank to Condor Audio from Israel for his high performance mods and repairs on Magnavox unit wich helped a lot in my repair project.You may check his beautiful website at http://www.condoraudio.com
The cd player reads now the TOC(table of contents) of any cd very fast, searching is fast also.
Maybe in the future my cd player will receive some mods also: bypass the filters and muting circuits and OP amps replacement but i am happy for now using it the way it is.
