After that, well, I couldn't help myself. I had to know what removing Q1 and Q6 would do for playing SACD's. Because up until now I still haven't been satisfied with the PB quality with them.
I have to say that I am coming to hate lead-free solder. It is a royal pita to deal with. In fact I'm starting to believe that our home vintage repair and modding hobby is heading for a great divide. Before LF solder and after. And most of the "after" gear will end up being recycled long before much of the "before" gear because the LF solder gear becomes too difficult to work with. And it will be interesting to see how many problems crop up in 10 years from tin whiskers creeping around inside of pcb's.
Anyway, having gotten that rant off of my chest, I was able to de-solder the B and C leads without too much problem but the emitter lead that was soldered to the ground plane just refused to melt. What with the fact that the through-holes are plated right through to the component side the solder goes all the way through and can be really difficult to remove. And in this case the ground plane is acting as enough of a heat sink that I reached the point where I was afraid that trying to get enough heat on the darn thing to overpower the heat sink effect would eventually end with lifted traced.
So eventually I destructively used side cutters to snip the lead on the component side. So most people probably won't want to do this.
I failed to take photos of the board (not hiding anything, just forgot) but here is a pic of the offending little things on the bench. They will never again over-filter a SACD.
So was it worth raping my player to find out if it would sound better? In my opinion a decided yes. To my ears SACD's now sound decidedly better. No noise or unwanted artifacts, pops or etc. But definitely clearer sound, more timbre. I like it. Doing this was worth it for me. YMMV.
Cheers,
James
I have to say that I am coming to hate lead-free solder. It is a royal pita to deal with. In fact I'm starting to believe that our home vintage repair and modding hobby is heading for a great divide. Before LF solder and after. And most of the "after" gear will end up being recycled long before much of the "before" gear because the LF solder gear becomes too difficult to work with. And it will be interesting to see how many problems crop up in 10 years from tin whiskers creeping around inside of pcb's.
Anyway, having gotten that rant off of my chest, I was able to de-solder the B and C leads without too much problem but the emitter lead that was soldered to the ground plane just refused to melt. What with the fact that the through-holes are plated right through to the component side the solder goes all the way through and can be really difficult to remove. And in this case the ground plane is acting as enough of a heat sink that I reached the point where I was afraid that trying to get enough heat on the darn thing to overpower the heat sink effect would eventually end with lifted traced.
So eventually I destructively used side cutters to snip the lead on the component side. So most people probably won't want to do this.
I failed to take photos of the board (not hiding anything, just forgot) but here is a pic of the offending little things on the bench. They will never again over-filter a SACD.
So was it worth raping my player to find out if it would sound better? In my opinion a decided yes. To my ears SACD's now sound decidedly better. No noise or unwanted artifacts, pops or etc. But definitely clearer sound, more timbre. I like it. Doing this was worth it for me. YMMV.
Cheers,
James
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