In this thread, I showed David's SX-1980 here for a full rebuild and recapping after I got the regulator redone and the big filter caps changed. Well, a few odds and ends that I've been waiting on showed up Friday, so I had to get busy and get it ready for reassembly by cleaning up and repainting the heatsinks. Yes, the heatsinks on the SX-1250, SX-1280, and the SX-1980 are painted. There might be a clear, thin anodized layer under the paint, but that black you see is not a black anodized coating...it's paint. So early Sat morning around 2AM I got the heatsinks covered with 3 or 4 coats or satin black paint, and although we generally celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, after everyone took off I went to work to get them mounted (day off? surely you jest.)
The heatsinks were still tacky (black takes sooo damn long to dry), so I tossed 'em into an oven preheated to 200°F for an hour, and that too care of that. Baked-on baby! Got the transistors reinstalled on the heatsinks with new heatsink compound, driver boards mounted, and all reassembled. Powered up, set bias and offset, and then did my final cleaning on the front panel and the tuner face. With the new caps, pots, and tweaks, this will be THE SX-1980. Address him as Sir please.
One thing I do with the Pioneer's that have these long rows of toggle switches is to add little felt rectangles on the switches under the faceplate (like Pioneer did with many other earlier models). I don't know when Pioneer stopped doing this, but I think the SX-x50 series has them, and the SX-x3x (including the SX-1010) has them also. They are an excellent idea to help keep crud out of the switches. Many units that have been disassembled over the years have had these left off by careless techs, but I don't think this 1980 has ever been apart before, so I believe the SX-x80 series may be missing them.
Anyway, I still have yet to put this on the distortion analyser, or test for full output. The only other 1980 that spent any time here was Brad's (Dingusboy's) 1980, but I didn't have proper dummy loads back then. So...tonight I will be finding exactly what a SX-1980 can do. David may also have to wait a little longer even after it is done and reassembled, as I have an E-MU 0404 soundcard on the way, and some software that should expand my testing capabilities by several orders of magnitude, and I'd like to use see if I can't generate some interesting charts and graphs. God knows, there's enough money and effort put into this that it would be nice to show something for the effort. Hope that old K6-2+ 550MHz system can handle it...
And yeah, we've played this game before many times, but who'd like to guess what a 1980 can do fully cranked at 1KHz into an 8-ohm load? Since I haven't done it yet and don't know myself, I'll even throw in my own guess later this afternoon/early evening before I actually do it. I won't guess now...as it'll likely affect everybody else's guess.
...and I'll be back with a few pics later, but ya'all already know what a 1980 looks like.
The heatsinks were still tacky (black takes sooo damn long to dry), so I tossed 'em into an oven preheated to 200°F for an hour, and that too care of that. Baked-on baby! Got the transistors reinstalled on the heatsinks with new heatsink compound, driver boards mounted, and all reassembled. Powered up, set bias and offset, and then did my final cleaning on the front panel and the tuner face. With the new caps, pots, and tweaks, this will be THE SX-1980. Address him as Sir please.
One thing I do with the Pioneer's that have these long rows of toggle switches is to add little felt rectangles on the switches under the faceplate (like Pioneer did with many other earlier models). I don't know when Pioneer stopped doing this, but I think the SX-x50 series has them, and the SX-x3x (including the SX-1010) has them also. They are an excellent idea to help keep crud out of the switches. Many units that have been disassembled over the years have had these left off by careless techs, but I don't think this 1980 has ever been apart before, so I believe the SX-x80 series may be missing them.
Anyway, I still have yet to put this on the distortion analyser, or test for full output. The only other 1980 that spent any time here was Brad's (Dingusboy's) 1980, but I didn't have proper dummy loads back then. So...tonight I will be finding exactly what a SX-1980 can do. David may also have to wait a little longer even after it is done and reassembled, as I have an E-MU 0404 soundcard on the way, and some software that should expand my testing capabilities by several orders of magnitude, and I'd like to use see if I can't generate some interesting charts and graphs. God knows, there's enough money and effort put into this that it would be nice to show something for the effort. Hope that old K6-2+ 550MHz system can handle it...
And yeah, we've played this game before many times, but who'd like to guess what a 1980 can do fully cranked at 1KHz into an 8-ohm load? Since I haven't done it yet and don't know myself, I'll even throw in my own guess later this afternoon/early evening before I actually do it. I won't guess now...as it'll likely affect everybody else's guess.
...and I'll be back with a few pics later, but ya'all already know what a 1980 looks like.
