Marantz Led light replacement project.

Just to throw my two cents in...

I have used Wsh4A's LED conversion kits for my 2245, 2252B and my 2270. There is not a hint of flicker at all. The documentation provided by Don makes this upgrade absolutely painless. Thanks again Don :)
The blue is an amazing deep cobalt. The dial pointer is a brilliant white against the cobalt...very nice...to me.
The heating of the unit has reduced by approximately 15 to 20 per cent.
I always change the vellum using bakers parchment paper and 3M double sided tape. Not the foam core, the very thin tacky one used by trophy manufactures to apply the engraved brass plates.
But I did make this observation last week.
A friend picked up a 2215 in good working condition but dirty as all heck. I took it apart and did the usual vacuum of the interior, deoxit and flube on all the pots, and change some of the burnt out lamps with some oem replacements I had on hand. I also changed the vellum, which had yellowed with age and heat. Cleaned the dial display and put it back together.
The unit lit up almost as blue as my 2270. A bit more subdued, but very nice. The unit runs hotter than my 2270 though.
I think for me, Dons LED upgrade kits are very well worth the time, effort and piece of mind that it will be the last time I have to replace any lamps in those units again.
 
oakman: I see you have tried almost every combination of LED´s in your receivers. Is it possible for you to send me some photos of different combinations of LED colors and also some solutions of the soldering and circuits for the new LED´s? I would appreciate it!

Steelman: Interesting to know about the LED conversions kit, still wondering how it can´t flickering.
 
I just changed the lamps in my Marantz 140. The previous owner had used 300mA lamps which resulted in warping the plastic housing. I am currently using 250mA lamps purchased from Bob. Seriously thinking about the LEDs to avoid all future complications. Can anyone tell me how to remove the vellum paper for the 140? Do I need to take the faceplate apart? Thanks in advance.
 
Tried the LEDs and promptly returned to the originals. They just didn't do it for me. :no:
 
I have done a 2230 and 2235b with LEDs. My preference is for using a bridge rectifier to convert to dc, no need for a filter cap, and use two series connected flat top white leds with about 17ma current. Here's one of mine. The variations of shade are caused by jpg compression not the lighting. It is a smooth even blue across the dial and meter face. The color is stark not soft like lamps but I like it and they generate no heat at all.
 

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LED Upgrade Kit

Hello,

I hate to resurrect an old thread, but I recently found a Marantz 2245 and would like to contact whsh93a about his LED kits. I visited his page and there is no longer a way to message him through the site. Is there another way to contact him?
 
I'd like to do up my Marantz 2226b one day, but I'm curious if people have done this to other receivers. I've got a Kenwood KR-3090 with no lamps and was wondering if LEDs mights be a possibility.
I have a Kenwood KR-3090 too and lights are still original. Dial is kind of white, both screens for signal and tunning are some sort of yellow and STEREO light is orange.I like it the way they are.:thmbsp:
 
I have a Kenwood KR-3090 too and lights are still original. Dial is kind of white, both screens for signal and tunning are some sort of yellow and STEREO light is orange.I like it the way they are.:thmbsp:

I replaced the original lamps and it looks pretty good. Maybe a little bit plain, but it suits the receiver, I suppose. I may look at LEDs in the future for this one. I think a blue-look would be cool. Too many projects waiting to be finished right now, though.
 
my goodness, all the bulbs for my 22275 went out, the dial light is still on fortunately, I am electronics illiterate, is there any route for a plug and play led? or do I still have to convert the ac in to dc and whatnot? if it's out of my skills then i should just find the original bulbs...though I do want the blue LED's
 
I just performed the LED mod on my Marantz 2230 and love it. My voltage readings were not as I had calculated, though. I had 7.3VAC to start with. After rectifying (circuit D in post 3) I had 9.8V. I notice Echowars didn't subtract the diode loss before calculating the peak voltage.

7.3*1.414= 10.32V ignoring diode loss
(7.3-.6)*1.414= 9.47V subtracting diode loss

Of course, neither matches my measurement. I used a 150uF cap which seems plenty big. Adding to my confusion, the data for the 1N4004 diode says that Vf is 1.1V which is way different than the .6V I measured.

http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=1N4004virtualkey51210000virtualkey512-1N4004

After installing all the new LEDs in the receiver, the voltage dropped back down to about 8V. Bottom line is I'm happy that it works and looks good, but it seems odd that the calculated and measured voltages were so different.
 
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The forward voltage of a diode rises with current. The spec you read on the data sheet is 1.1V maximum @ 1A of current. The forward voltage will be much less at lower currents.

In my calcs in post #3, I made the assumption that the diode Vf plus the LED Vf = 3.9V.
 
The diode specs make sense now. But I still don't understand the peak voltage calc.
The voltage on the cap will attempt to charge to the peak voltage, which will be the two times the square root of 2, times the RMS value, or 1.414 * 8V = 11.3V.
The diode is between the transformer and the cap, so it seems like the cap should see less than the 8V RMS of the transformer (or in my case 7.3).

EDIT - Oops, I reread your post and saw this...
In reality, the calculations are skewed because once we're blocking the reverse voltage with a diode we no longer have 8VAC RMS from the transformer, but it's close enough to get the job done.
I guess its probably more complicated than simply subtracting the diode voltage from the transformer voltage. And yes, the LED lights work great, so it is close enough to get the job done. Thank you for your explanation.

Twodogs
 
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i discovered that super bright led.s installed on the side pointing slightly downwards in the middle of the vu meter running at 5.8ma plus leaving the old lamp in place so the led is nearly underneath the old lamp works really good ..it was my first attempt and i am impressed ..next is to see if the customer likes it .
by the way this was in a pioneer at 8v 55ma original lamps ..i used 1.5k resistor for each 30ma led
 
Hello,

I hate to resurrect an old thread, but I recently found a Marantz 2245 and would like to contact whsh93a about his LED kits. I visited his page and there is no longer a way to message him through the site. Is there another way to contact him?

I also tried to contact him. It looks like he was banned back in 10/10. I was told to try ebay.
 
I just installed LEDs in my 2215b with great results. I found the supplier on ebay but we made the arrangements outside of ebay so I could get a better shipping rate.


Marantz 2215b 2 by Buhduh, on Flickr
 
I just installed LEDs in my 2215b with great results. I found the supplier on ebay but we made the arrangements outside of ebay so I could get a better shipping rate.

Who is that person that you contacted? I need LED replacements myself too :).
 
I am one of the guys that didnt like the color of the LED replacements originally. I had tried them maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Have they gotten better, or maybe I should say "changed" in any way since then? I thought they just looked "wrong" or maybe too hot for the proper look. It is all subjective, of course, but the idea of reducing heat is still appealing.

So, guys, and gals- are any of the newer ones any different looking?
 
I am one of the guys that didnt like the color of the LED replacements originally. I had tried them maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Have they gotten better, or maybe I should say "changed" in any way since then? I thought they just looked "wrong" or maybe too hot for the proper look. It is all subjective, of course, but the idea of reducing heat is still appealing.

So, guys, and gals- are any of the newer ones any different looking?
There's so many LED's out there that I can safely say that there are many that would look like ass, and many that would look pretty good.

These are the ones I have been using (and the ones that eBay seller I suggested earlier also uses). They have a 360° dispersion, and a color temperature just a tad hotter than a florescent lamp (white with a slight leaning towards the blue). They work great for Marantz tuner backlights.
 
I bought my most recent ones from Northridge Electronics, on ebay as user cotillion777. The first ebay ones I bought for my 140 about a year ago were more expensive but this new guy charged me $5 each and $5 shipping for 11 lamps to Canada.

Here's my 140 with the earlier ones:

5496579336_e130fc96e9_z.jpg


On my blog you can see the 2215b and my 112 tuner with the newer ones. They appear more uniform than the 140 meters but that is more likely because of the large surface area of the meters.
 
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