Well I know that there are people out there who still do electronics type work, I do a little, but like the Maggy 6disc changer I tried to bring back to life, it’s just beyond what I can do. Caps I can do if the board is not too busy. But..... there are people who do this for a hobby, and it would be nice to find someone who could do this at a reasonable price. Now, I’m getting the 650 Maggy tomorrow and the first thing I’m going to do if it even powers up is keep it powered up for 48 hours and let it get nice and warm, then if it loads a disc then I’ll clean it up internally and if it still plays nice, I’ll pop my burn in cd and let it play for another 48 hours. And let those original caps get nice and gooey. And now we have the FD 2041 on the way, this is going to be fun. Beave
Having a good night you all, just got the Maggy 650, still in the box....going to open it soon. Got the 1541’s! Damn. Beave
Dang it, my Sony CDP-750 with the TDA chip is skipping now like mad on all kinds of CDs...and I'm 4 days out of the Ebay return period UGH
I think it was $60 before tax and ship. I did find out I can put in a claim through Paypal since you can do so within 180 days of a purchase -- in my case I'm like 4 days out of the Ebay 30 day return window. The seller did say the player "skipped if moved" but that's a whole other issue than skipping if it's sitting and not moving lol. Funny thing is that it was fine and I extensively used it for 3 solid weeks, and it's in good cosmetic condition...but these things DO happen. Just haven't had a problem like this manifest in this way, this quickly, before...usually if it's damaged or compromised from being in transit, you find out immediately.
Yeah, so I don't get it. But try this. Do the qtip alcohol thing and swab the lens of the laser, some contamination could have easily gotten stuck on it and threw the whole focus off. Then let us know. Good Luck! And I had to trash a Maggy 2041 cause it obviously died in shipment to me, and I really wanted that deck but it was way beyond what I could do, so it had to be buried in the ground. rip 2041 beave
I always take my purchases to my local tech and have him go through it and get a tune up. If it checks out great I keep it if not I send it back especially if it doesnt match the item description.
Well, both the 650 and the 2041 decks turned into a debacle. I played the 650 for a night with it not in the stereo to make sure there was no issues there, but the next day, when I hooked it up to the stereo the left channel on the main outs was dead! The “filtered” output was fine but that did me no good so I had to get a refund and send it back. Then I unpacked the 2041 and plugged it in, drawer wouldn’t open, belt was good so something else was amis, so I had to get a refund for that one also, real big bummer.........but that was a couple of weeks ago, the story hopefully will take a turn for the better soon. Beave
Well with a lot of these units going on 30-40 years old now they would need to be restored meaning recapping ect. If it is a unit you will want to keep.
Ok, let’s open up this can of worms while respecting your opinion, which I do, but disagree with. In my post upstairs it is apparent that we’re dealing with very old gear but more importantly we’re dealing with sellers that are just flipping goodwill units. Their NOT for the most part, even taking a cloth to clean the cover of the deck! I see, all the time, filthy with dust, dirt and crap, units on eBay, and the seller has the balls to claim it’s in “excellent “ condition!!!!!!!!! And their so stupid they don’t even realize that their posting pictures of the unit in filthy condition. So for the most part, your really taking a chance on buying such a unit. On the other hand, the Maggy 650 I bought looked almost new, pretty good chance to take right? Yes, so I took it, unfortunately the seller didn’t put the thing into a stereo and realized that the left channel is dead!!! Honest mistake, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. So there are indeed NO guarantees. Now to the Maggy 500 I got from my local goodwill for $4.99, when I picked it up, to inspect it, the loading tray just came out while I was tipping it to inspect it! Crap, this things broken I thought! Plus it was dirty but not scratched up. So I took the chance. I cleaned it up, and it cleaned up really well! I’ve got the pictures, and when I opened it up to inspect the inside it wasn’t that bad, one belt, laser transport easy to get to to clean. So after all is said and done, it’s been rocking my system for going on 2 months now! It looks brand new, because I know how to refurbish properly, but up to a point. I don’t go into the circuit board, changing components, if the unit is broken in that way, I give it back to goodwill. But what I also do if the unit basically works ok is I do a 1st stage cleaning then I put in a 78 min cd and put it on “repeat “ and let it run for 32 hours to see if it fails. The next day if it’s still working properly, I got a good deck! The idea of replacing the caps is nice, I even asked here if someone knew someone here that does that for a fair price, got no response. So, I’m left with this, if the caps and resistors and other components look good, then if it’s not broken leave it alone! The sound I’m getting out of the 500 is game changing to me, and I don’t see it failing any time soon. One has to ask oneself the question “why are these units, for the most part, even working at all after 30+ years? It’s because they DID use the best components at the time and they have stood the test of time. So much so that we’re discussing them right now! So yes, if one has the means to get a unit redone to try and elongate it’s life, by all means do it! But the fact that so many units still perform well today after all these decades speaks volumes on the components used in these decks. Moving on to Saturday! Beave
Brainwashed by the Beave! I pulled the trigger on Maggy CDB-460 today. Really clean deck. New belt, laser cleaned, track lubed. Looks new on the outside and hopefully the insides are just as good and I can get a few years use out of it.
Ah yes, that’s what I’m here for! Ok now first let’s congratulate ssmith for his score! And now let’s put it in today’s perspective, for under $200 he just bought a Classic CD Philips made player with THE classic sought after 16 bit Ladder DAC, the TDA1541A. It’s been serviced and even in trashed condition these units are KNOWN for playing flawlessly. So........ Any decent deck, like my Audiolab 8300, which goes for $1299.00 mind you, is going to have the latest dac tech in it, but for literally pennies on the dollar, he got a deck that will continue to blow most current and future cd spinners out of the water for sheer musicality. I would venture to say ssmith did very well for himself! Me, I just got through refurbishing the Maggy 502 I just bought, not perfect but it went from a 6.5 to a 9.1 after servicing! $50 total I paid for it. Dual TDA1543’s. And the swing arm transport! Gotta LOVE IT BAYBEE!
Thank You! Again it just proves that right now in this day, we have the opportunity to go forward in reverse! (Props to Ozzy there!). But seriously, if anybody who wanted to try and dip their feet into the Ladder dac thing, the door is wide open, for less then $100. Can’t get much better than that! Beave
Thanks Beave I'll give it a shot. What's a little odd is that the skipping isn't like usual "clicking" but rather a lower-toned, almost "throbbing"/"pulsing" sound when it occurs. Haven't run into that before. At least the Sony CDP-590 with the Burr Brown ladder PCM56 DAC's is working great now that I used a little compressed air, the tray was opening/closing automatically but it seems like it worked itself out. Playing like a champ (and a bargain for $25, the seller had taken off 50% when I told him it wasn't working right). As a side note I splurged and picked up a Rotel player, always wanted to try one of those. There was a basically mint, boxed 965BX Limited Edition on the Bay (with remote and manual) and it has a later Philips bistream DAC SAA-7323. Just couldn't pass it up. The quality is outstanding and the sound is phenomenal, though it is not bargain priced (though may be compared to what it once used to sell for lol).
One other thing Andy, I run into this quite often, the spindle the disc rests on usually has some kind of semi sticky ring that keeps the disc from slipping. I have had numerous decks that have debris sticking on it causing the disc to not be flat, and that causes all sorts of problems. Easy fix, pop the cover and with a lot of Sony decks if you open the tray it exposes the lase and the spindle. Take A piece of Scotch invisible tape and tap it on the spindle, taking off the dirt. Most techs don’t even check for this but I run into it quite frequently. A flat disc is a happy disc, and even a strand of pet hair can throw everything off. Beave
And the 590 tray problem is due to the belt loose or slipping, mine did it constantly but once I cleaned the belt, and a bunch of black crap was cleaned off the belt it started working like new.
But they didn’t have the 1541......... Their dac’s were very different,as in loud and glaring, I know, I have a 590 midline deck Beave
Hey scatterbrained, if your still out there, have you ever popped the top of your 960? Just to see exactly w
My Dac an Audio Note Dac-3 Signature from way back in 1995 uses the BB PCM63P-K chips, two of them and sounds fantastic. I had the output caps upgraded recently and it sounds even better. Also one of my fave hifi reviewers, Christian Punter of Hifi Advice is Dutch and has a bunch of reviews and pics of classic Philips/Marantz and other classic CD players. Digital Classics | HFA - The Independent Source for Audio Equipment Reviews
This is a VERY important thing to be aware of when dealing with these older decks. Philips decks were obviously a bit higher class than the Magnavox units, but in a lot of cases, not by much. There are numerous models that cross both brand names and I haven’t had enough experience with them to know if they used better basic components. But what I do know, is that there are Magnavox units that are very easy to work on. And the more upscale Philips models are more complicated when it comes to working on them. Beave
Well that’s a valid opinion, but in my case it’s wrong. Over the past 10 years I’ve gone through CD players with dac chips from Cyrus, TI, ESS, AKM, Analog Devices in CD players ranging in price from $129 to $1299 , a good cross section of affordable players without going into ‘richville’. So all in all, they sounded good, but they all sounded digital, it wasn’t until I got an OPPO 205 with the SABRE ESS 9038 pro chip did I hear digital that DIDNT sound so digital. And it’s been an evolving thing, when I originally bought an Onkyo 7030 I called it here a giant killer. At that time I was really impressed by its fuller sound compared to my older decks. But as I used more decks they all sounded like the 7030, even the expensive ones, and that opened my eyes to what the digital landscape was. But that OPPO changed everything. But then, the Maggie’s with the 1540 and 1541 chips came into my life, and that changed the game again. I laughed at the fact that I was listening to a 30+ year old CD player that blew away every other player I’ve had except for the OPPO. OLD TECH, Ladder dac, with specs that new dac’s exceed by miles. And that was just the 1541 standard edition. And then I got a Maggy with the 1541 S1 chip and the world turned upside down, in a/b comparisons with my other decks, level matched, the S1 chip deck Blows away the other decks, and the sound effect isn’t subtle, it’s startling! The other decks sound good, switching to the S1 Maggy EVERYTHING in the sonic soundstage goes from 2 dimension to 3 dimensional. It’s quite amazing, and on top of that the sound is so close to Analog that it’s what confounded me, how could this be? Maybe it’s that the 15xx chips we’re military grade chips and that’s why they were so expensive back in the day? So, in my system, all I know is that this deck with the 1541S1 chip fulfills what digital was supposed to be, while leaving all the other ‘technically’ advanced chips in the dust. Beave
While I’m bumping this thread I’d like to announce that I am the proud papa of a Mint Condition Philips CD50 with a 1541A chipset inside. Just got it a few weeks ago and it appears that it was basically unused by the original owner. Funny that I got the $1299 Audiolab 8300 and it’s now out of the system, but I scored this Mint deck for $275, a bit more than the ‘goodwill’ units and worth every penny in its like new condition. (The unit was actually $230, but put tax and shipping on top of that). So, the deals are still out there, you just have to be diligent in searching for one and then keeping your fingers crossed. I got really lucky with this one. Now I’ve got to see if the A chip sounds like the S1 chip. Beave
