fishball79 0 Report post Posted May 16, 2003 (edited) 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 Edited May 17, 2003 by fishball79 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rameish 0 Report post Posted May 17, 2003 Fishball, Can't see the pix?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fishball79 0 Report post Posted May 17, 2003 So sorry~! Pictures are now here http://www.geocities.com/fishball1979/teac-cdp/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Northern Oak 0 Report post Posted May 17, 2003 IN the past, TEAC players were better than the Pioneer ones. Treasure it! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mackie 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 Yo dude! Congrats on your new purchase. U can mod this cdp to your heart's content. At least the initial link ie. transport is a fine one, a forte of Teac. Do U know that YBA cdps use Teac's transports? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tee 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 Congras fishball, a Teac at that price is one of the best bargain in town (or in Perth ??). Even Wadia started out using Teac's transport in the early years, so the fundamental of its build is very good. Luck has also fallen upon me as i just closed a bundled deal for Denon DCD-3560 CDP and Stax Nova Eearspeaker system at less than S$200 in total two days ago. The player is also a true classic, as Denon had even commissioned 2 test discs to commemorate this player at its launch. Its construction was an industry standard back in early 90s. The casing employs a fully copper-plated main chassis, reinforced by a high centre partition plate and covered by a steel enclosure to protect the delicate laser pick-up from the sound pressure created by the loudspeakers and from other vibrations. The top plate of extruded aluminum forms a dual vibration- prevention design. The front panel is also made of solid extruded aluminum and the bottom plate employs a four-fold multiple-layer design with a 1.6mm steel plate below the main chassis. The large and heavy insulator feet are made of sintered metal to effectively absorb vibrations. The centre partition plate of the chassis has a supportive function and also separates the mechanism / power supply and the circuitry into two areas, thereby preventing any mechanism or electrical interference. It is really built like a tank and has a weight of 17kg ! Now, i have an excuse to hunt for a secondhand DAC....humm any suggestion besides NSD192, MF X-DAC/24k, AN DAC-Zero ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fishball79 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 (edited) 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... Edited May 18, 2003 by fishball79 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lengcm 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 (edited) Tee, you may want to take a look at Jude's review of the MSB GoldlinkIII and other review of theMSB link DAC III and the MSB DAC II. http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread....&threadid=32051 http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread....=&threadid=1404 http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread....s=&threadid=581 My personal favourite would be the Chord DAC 64. Looks really cool but the price is a mjaor turn off as with all Chord products. I have seen 2nd hand Chord DAC 64 going at about 1000-1200 pounds in the UK. The other DAC I am looking it is the Bel Canto DAC 2. If I am not wrong there is a Audio Note DAC in Ebay as well. Edited May 18, 2003 by lengcm Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tee 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 Thanks fishball and lengcm. I have auditioned the MSB Link III with full Nelson upgrade (but less P1000 power supply) quite recently. It didn't sound as good as my NSD192 but was hoping to get a MSB Platinum but so far no used one in the market, and the price of new set is exorbitant (about S$6k at Hi-End Research). So far, my favourite has been NSD192 and another friend of mine has actually traded in his Sony SCD-XA777ES for a NSD. As I am already using Denon DCD-S1, any new DAC to be acquired must therefore sound better and more analog than my existing NSD and Denon DACs. Since i am not a DIYer, i need to search for existing sets of Chord DAC64, Bel Canto DAC and CAL tube for audition. Btw, has anyone tried the famous Japanese DAC by Harmonics (can't remember the model but it has 777 in the name, and is designed by the expert who designed XRCD recording and mastering equipment for JVC ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rameish 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 Would any of you guys want to try the Corda Analoguer? If you're into DAC etc. I don't know if Jan Meier has any more stock - he stopped production some monts back but I can ask if there are any left. You can home audition this one with a refundable deposit. Sorry have to be cautious as I "lost" a pair of interconnects. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fishball79 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 (edited) 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... Edited May 18, 2003 by fishball79 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
evil-zen 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 kind of stupid but how do you know who made the transport of a cd player? i opened up my denon and didn't see any markings on the transport. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rameish 0 Report post Posted May 18, 2003 Sorry to be a bit off topic but what digicam are u using fish. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
