fishball79

I'd pick the one of a shot of her bum *only*

Thanks for the tips N@Z, Will open up cd player and try to take better pics... after climbing that mountain of study and assignments... sighs

There's still 8 days!!! Anyway prices will slowly creep up and then jump as the auction approaches closing time. Snipers are always abound... one bid, one win.

Evil zen, I know the Denon DCD2880 (also known as 1650AR), one step below the S10 models, uses... *drum roll* SHARP! Replacement lens costed me $28. I dropped it in and it worked beautifully. Rameish, A crappy 2megapixel Fuji Finepix 2600. Has 3x optical zoom (totally 11x). It cant focus on anything within 1m of the lens so i can't take up close shots.

Are those black gate caps i see? Cant make out the opamp model but probably Burr brown OPAs... ALPS Blue beauty pot too... Pretty good parts... Spend a small amount of money say, $100 or so and you can make a good power supply to improve this amp more. Creek got sell power supplies right?

N@Z, My guess is someone borrow a pair home for audition and mysteriously disappeared... Mackie, yeah balls, am planning a road map for me player. FIrst and foremost, identify the transport and find a spare one! Yeeeaaaaccchhh do NOT like YBA sound... but i knew of Teac's history of good transport products so this wasn't a buy n hope it'll turn out well. Am surprised it turned out better than expected due to the construction, mods and da...

Ram, great speakers.. jamo 8... there is a local seas ditributor but i cant afford to make a similae veresion tho

Tee, Brisbane actually The way you describe the player sounds very similar to my previous one, Denon DCD2880. My player's feet isn't as good as the way u described yours though, I used ceramic cones to decouple them from shelf. My denon player's transport isn't very good, a cheap sharp one, it sounded worse when compared to a external cdrom when both are uses as transports! I liked the Denon internal Lamba DA, perhaps you could hunt down an old Denon S series DA? Its rather dynamic, does all sorts of things well. It is however, abit on the lean side so a used CAL tube da? AHF Art Audio sells tube DA kits and assembled ones... you ought to have a look. The only external DA i liked was NSD192, made speakers disappear man...

So sorry~! Pictures are now here http://www.geocities.com/fishball1979/teac-cdp/

And I thought I'd never get a good deal in Australia. How surprisingly wrong i was. After a few weeks of monitoring what's for sale on aussie ebay i bid and won a 12 year old Teac cd player. Costed me $130 including $27.50 courier service that did not promise same day delivery but did so. Pictures are HERE Paid for it this morning and it arrived at 3pm. Rather hefty player, about 5-6kg. Owner even threw in a new pair of freebie interconnects. The faceplate is actually a piece of solid polished aluminum. The weird silvery thing on top is my lamp I didn't expect it to sound much better than my laptop or discman, indeed, my first impressions were that its got slightly rolled off highs, lack details, lack low bass. This is coming from plugging the headphones direct into the phones socket. One reason why I bought it was that Teac had a long history of studily built players, uses good transport and this one had headphones out as well as variable out. In case I do decide to build an amp and speakers. Of course after checking that it works, plays CD-Rs and is working perfectly, I opened it up and peeked under its thin steel case. Pretty well spaced out. Clock and analogue output on left of transport, digital and functional portion on the right with power supply right behind transport. Parts are sparse and well spaced out. Power supply looks very cheap... that is probabbly one of my first mods. The DAC uses 2 TDA1541, one of the best measured 16bit da chip that some still use for their projects for a non over or upsampled approach! My, aren't I lucky. Lo and behold~! I noticed that the output stage was already modified! It is already using a pair of soldered-in AD712JN opamps and further down the signal path, a pair of 0.1uf Wondercaps! A quick call to the seller reveals that the unit was modified by the dealer before it was sold. Fair enough. Kewl... but what i heard dont seem to reflect the quality of parts inside. I left it on before going to school and catching Matrix Reloaded... came back and had a short listen. Wow, things certainly improved. Vocals were more alluring, slightly less cold sounding though at louder volumes it starts to sound harsh and still no low bass. Not bad, sounds pretty good. Right now I think its well worth the money i spent and definitely better than buying a Marantz CD 6000 OSE even at Singaporean prices. Will document more mods along the way. Here's the initial plan Compulsory Mods Upgrade clock Change caps Replace power supply Build isolation platform or device for player. As And When I Feel Like Doing Treat all bare conducting surfaces with progold Dampen & Brace chassis Decouple PCB from chassis Experiment with other opamps Blu tac flimsy surfaces

Too many quiet lurkers who never post... perhaps something to prompt them to post and hence share their experiences?

Watch out for Indonesian, Malaysian pressings of albums. They are very cheap, ~$15 new but might sound harsh. Most of these albums are very discrete about their origins. One very easy way to tell is by looking at the quality of the fine print on the back of the album cover. If the recording company name ends with Pte Ltd its a singaporean pressing. So far no complaints on SG pressings tho. The difference between these and US/UK ones isn't stark but enough to make me regret getting those. You might not notice this but come to regret later when your stereo gets 'higher' end.

Heh wait till your holiday in Tekong comes, whether you into it or not it'll be here there, everywhere >

Guys, Tried placing ur cd player on ball bearings? I used some 1/2" metal ones for all my equipment for a while, improvements were improved all round freq response, you notice more details, bass was tighter and sliiiiightly deeper. For me, the highs got slightly more harsher and more sibilant. This isn't surprising since I have pretty sh*tty stuff INSIDE the player and amps... I ended up using gum drop sized ceramic cones for my cd player. That was a compromise but my stereo was never harsh nor sibilant after that.

Ram, Any tips to reduce the circumference for grado cans that have been bent outwards too much?

Just a tiny small note, Bringing something out of nothing is often when you hear when you tweak. Yes, it is possible to get better or more bass or more details by tweaking, especially with isolation devices. This is due to the lowering of the noise floor, bringing previously lost details into 'light'. And yes, YOU MUST HEAR IT TO BELIEVE IT!

Mackie, Nah, I know very much less than you think i do. Basically when it comes to mods I only know of 2. Upgrade components and dampening. Upgrading parts is very straight forward. Make sure new part is the exactly the same value and rated higher. Power supply capacitors can have a slight leeway of 10%. The minimum I would do to a player would be the Clock and dampen the chassis. As for dampening, as i said, watch out for any loss in heat dissipation when u stick bitumen pads or blu tac into the player. Also make sure you dont hinder any mechanical movement. Just tap ur fingernail all over the player to find places to dampen. Dampening the player would improve the sound be it speakers or cans. The cd player after all has a spinning disc inside that will cause vibrations. As listening thru cans avoid phase, resonance and room problems, you'd notice a tweak more so on cans than speakers. Someone needs to test it out and let us know Its easy to test this, put cdp on flimsy desk, listen. Then leave it on a solid surface or if u have isolation platforms, even better. Oh yes Opaque Green Marker for the edges of the cd. I compared two cds and the difference is there. Sorry cant explain the diff cos i dont remember.

Rameish, Appreciate the service but i'm in brisbane! One thing about headband tho, my is a used pair and the headband was kind of overstretched. Anyway to reduce the diameter of the headband?

Mackie, Try filling all empty spaces that wont come into contact with gears and such of the cd tray with BLU TAC Also, open up the cdp and locate an elongated metal can. There should be only one of this and it is the cdp clock. Placing a blob of blutac around it covering the surrounding pcb as well would improve the focus of the sound. Also any flimsy resonant surfaces of the cdp chassis can be dampened with once again the blue goop. Do watch out for any possible physical movement by the tray and heat from the power supply if you do place blu tac near these areas tho. Simplest internal tweaks i can think of.

Actually performance is affected by the intricate reaction between the headphones and the amp. This is less apparent with headphones cos either you use one cos ur headphones aren;t loud enough or you dont cos you think its loud enough. Amps give proper drive to cans so even if you have very efficient grados is playing sufficiently loud, the use of a headphone amp (in this case, one designed for high efficiency cans) will literally 'open up the sound' If you have cheap cans, a good amp would improve it this much. If you have good cans the improvement with the same amp is even more. I'd think you'd benefit more immediately with an amp. I used to listen to music on HD580, X-Cans on my PC, that was my first hifi.

VERY NICE PRICE *EYES THE RS-1* What about spare foam pads? I prefer the SR60 one, the donut ones hurt my ears after 2 hrs or so of listening

Next upgrade, better headphone amp!

Congrats Oak! Quite sure the brightness would disappear after more playing.

ting, Grados are so well liked by so many magazines that any dealer carrying them would not need to give much service as people literally come in droves to get em. Why bother wasting ur time trying to sell something that's already selling itself? Actually thats the modus operandi of many shops here, bring in [insert magazine name] 5 Star products and wait for the masses.

The glasshead idea isn't attractive to me... it'd make a good candy holder cum headphone stand tho hehehe I have thought of just getting a large hook and tape it to the side of the table... it'll be my last resort tho...