Denon DCD-3000 Mod Thread

[Bratwurst7s]

I have had a lot of fun with the Denon DCD1290 and DCD-2700 CD players and have been keeping my eyes open for a DCD-3000 to play with.

They are a bit of a rare bird and usually go for a good bit of cash over here. Last month I saw one up for auction with no reserve. But it was described as damaged, and no feedback as to what the damage was. Optically it looked pretty good in the photos and I decided to take the risk if I could get it for a reasonable price.

Which I did, €160 including shipping.

It arrived well packaged, double boxed. Optically it looks like it has been sitting in an attic or cellar for a long time as it has some moisture staining on the faceplate but all in all pretty nice and I think that it will polish up just fine.

I just realized that I failed to take any photos before opening it up but here is one with the top and drawer face removed.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

So after getting it on the bench I powered it up, the display lit and showed the normal blank time info. When I tried to open the drawer it opened about half way and stopped with a clank and blocked mechanically.

So I powered it down and removed the drawer face and case top. And removed the steel mechanism cover. After that it was easy enough to see the problem, the disk spindle was loose from the spindle motor and was magnetically attached to the clamping disk, thus blocking the drawer from opening.

The spindle disk was cracked and the laser dust cover had a scuff on the end the same dia as a CD. So I can only guess how someone did that but the only thing that really mattered is seeing it I could repair it.

I got a little ahead of myself and didn't get any photos until I was well into that repair so bear with me for a bit.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

So I had to:

A) Find a replacement spindle disk.
B) Find the correct installed height.
C) Get the new disk onto the shaft at that height without bending or damaging it.

The DCD-3000 uses the same KSS-240A laser pickup as the DCD-2700, and I have 3 used spindle motor assy's from that model. But they have an older plastic spindle disk that is thicker than the DCD-3000 and replacement assy's for the 2700, which use a steel disk with plastic hub.

There is a fellow in Austria that sells a lot of OEM Denon spare parts on ebay and I looked over what he had and found a assembly from a different model of player that had what looked like the correct disk so I took a chance and bought it. with shipping I spent €23 for a little 30mm dia disk. Worth it if it was the right one and I could get if off the motor without damaging it but a risk nonetheless. What the heck.

It arrived promptly and the disk was the right one. Now to get it off without damage.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

I was talking over making some kind of puller with a friend at work and he immediately suggested looking at model train tools. Great idea! I looked around a bit and found a lot of mini-pullers and settled on one from an outfit called Fohrmann-Werkzeuge. They had one that fits 35mm wheels and I bought one.

https://www.fohrmann.com/de/abzieher-fuer-raeder-spur-h0-bis-35-mm-oe.html

One of the nice things about the tool is that is has replaceable hardened tips and I bought a couple of extra 1.8mm tips with conical ends that self center nicely over the motor shaft. The motor shaft is 2mm and has a rounded tip and I was concerned with the tip slipping off and damaging the plastic hub.

I didn't like the shape of the puller arm tips so I made a small support plate out of alluminum to fit under the disk.

This little rig worked perfectly. Before pulling the disk I took an x-acto knife and carefully cut the ring of glue free from the underside of the disk that is used to fix it in place from slipping. It popped free with no damage to the disk hub.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Note: I saw these mini-pullers at several different online stores, they all looked exactly the same except for the plastic sticker. The one that I found was the least expensive. At this point I'm going to guess that they are actually produced in a rather large Asian country and are available all over the place with different names stuck to them.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Setting the installed height. Gotta know what it should be first.

I have 3x used spindle motor assy's removed from DCD-2700's.

These have a plastic disk with a metal insert to give the clamping magnet something to pull on. They measure 1.3mm thick on the disk rim. 30mm dia.

The motor shaft on all of these (and the DCD-3000) measures 2mm in dia and 18mm long.

The installed disk height on these assy's measured 19.3mm, from the top of the disk to the top of the base frame.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

I pulled my DCD-2700 from the system and opened it up to measure the installed spindle disk height of the newer type steel spindle disks.

I got 19.4mm from the disk top to base. Which I found interesting. Interesting because they are different than the old types and interesting because it seems to indicate that 0.1mm of difference is tolerable for the laser focus. Which is good to know.

These measurements were made with Mitutoyo dial calipers. I took several measurements in each case and I feel quite confidant of the results +/- a few 0.01mm.



These photos are from the DCD-2700.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

So now that I had some reasonably good numbers to work with I needed to fashion a standoff.

I settled on something with an OD of 20mm. This is a large enough diameter to still provide a stable upper contact surface while having a small enough dia to clear all of the plastic castings on the mounting frame.

I have some 20mm beach hardwood dowel and considered using that. Hard enough to be stable but easy enough to work with, and while I still think that it could have worked...

...I remembered that we have a nice metal lathe at work and a bin of odds & ends of scrap brass. Now, while I took a short CNC milling course 14 years ago, I have never used a manual metal lathe. So it remained to be seen if I could even make anything useful.

But I was able to find some scraps of 20mm round brass bar stock so it was time to give it a try.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

And here are the results.

After squaring up the end of the bar I first countersunk with a 10mm drill, and then a 15mm. After that I bored a 3mm hole all the way through for the motor shaft. The countersink gives enough room for the spindle disk hub to sit in the standoff, while still leaving enough contact surface for the disk.

Oh. I forgot to mention. While the plastic type spindle disk has a 1.3mm thick rim the metal type is made with 1mm thick steel, with a 0.1mm step formed into the bottom. This gives an effective 1.1mm thickness for the disk. So to get an installed height of 19.3->19.4mm I needed a standoff 18.2mm high. Which is what I shot for when I cut off the standoff from my bar stock.

What I ended up with was 18.23mm high. I thought about trying to turn the end to shoot for a perfect 18.2mm but decided to let well enough alone. I figured that I was well inside of a total tolerance on 0.1mm and stood just as much chance of going too far and having to start over, and I only had enough material for 2 tries. And I want to make another standoff of 18.0mm to use with those thicker plastic disks.

After cutting the standoff I clamped it between some plastic in my bench vise and filed a relief on the bottom to allow clearance of the motor mounting screws. Then I cut it in half with a hacksaw.

The finished standoff looks pretty crude but has the positive attribute of doing what it is supposed to.

Here are some photos of the standoff with the old cracked disk for reference.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

When it came to actually installing the disk I supported the assy frame with some wood blocks. set the standoff pieces in place and simply carefully pushed the disk onto the motor shaft with all 5 fingers of one hand pressing against the plastic hub.

I got an installed height of just over 19.33 mm. I can live with that, it's under the middle point of my desired installed height.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

After that I flipped the assy over and carefully applied a ring of glue to fix the disk on the shaft. I let that sit overnight before going further. I used the time to clean and lube the entire drawer loading mech.



This last photo. While studying the service manual I've noticed some small and interesting detail differences between the DCD-3000 and DCD-S10, and also between the Asian and North America/Europe models. Shown in the SM is a piece of damping material placed under and above the steel mounting frame under the loading mech in the DCD-S10 (Asia model). I have some 5mm thick dense closed sell foam and decided to cut a piece to place under the frame. 5mm is just thick enough to give a small amount of compression when the frame is screwed down to the case bottom. It looks somewhat crude, but I figured that it couldn't hurt to include it.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Before going on, some thoughts about what to use for a test CD.

The DCD-2700 SM states to use "Reference Disk CA-1094" during adjustment and calibration. Well I have sure scoured the web looking for one of those without luck. I have found and bought a Denon "Digital Audio Check CD", P/N C39-7441-EX, made in 1985. But I haven't used that thing yet. It has 14 tracks of test tones etc and 12 more music tracks, for a total running time of 64 minutes 32 seconds.

But when reading the DCD-3000 SM one sees: "Test disk: CA-1094 Yasuko TOMITA or CO-76143 W.A. Mozart". Huh. Is this why I kept coming up with music CD results when I searched for Denon Test & Reference cd's? Heck, there are lots of those to find. So I bought a Denon DEG-10005 "Mozart by Denon" CD on ebay. 13 music tracks with a total running time of 73:47. This is the CD that I used when doing the adjustments/calibration of my DCD-1290 and DCD-2700 and also used it with the DCD-3000.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

So finally, a couple of days ago I got everything put back together and it was time to find out if any of this work resulted in a working machine.

And yes! It made me very happy to see that the player immediately read the TOC after loading the Mozart disk. And the darn thing plays music! It sounded good enough that I let the cd play through to the end. Heck yeah! I now have a working DCD-3000 to play with.

Game on!

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

So one last note for now.

Spindle motors wear out. Well, their bearings do. Before deciding to use the installed motor I undertook the highly technical measurement of wiggling the motor shaft and comparing it to both an old motor and a new replacement motor. I found no perceptible slop in the shaft, just the tiniest bit of free play, no more than the new motor.

But these motors, as much as the laser pickup, are one of the major limiting factors in the lifetime of all of these fine machines. And there are no more spindle motor assemblys to be bought. You can forget it unless you get very lucky. I've been scouring the internet in search of assy's for 1290's, 2700's and 3000's. When working on my 2700's I managed to find 3 assy's, one from PacParts and 2 from that fellow in Austria.

I'm pretty sure that in spite of having different part numbers the assy's in all 3 of these machines are interchangeable. There are a few small differences, but they are only some small holes in the mounting plate that aren't being used. Since the DCD-890 also uses the KSS-240A that might be a direction to search also but I think that we can count on not being able to find new assy's anywhere anymore.

But the motors can still be found! They are a Mabuchi RF-310T-11400 and all over ebay. All made in China but guess what? So were the original motors. And they are very reasonably priced. They are apparently used by RC modelers so hopefully they will be around for a while. I bought 10 of them recently, that's how I had a new motor to compare to the one installed in the DCD-3000. Note that the new motors all have a 22mm long shaft compared to the original 18mm. This is not a problem, as the clamping disk has a hole through it that will allow a 4mm longer shaft without obstructing anything.

So my main point here is that if we want to keep using, restoring and modding our old players we have to learn how to replace the spindle motors. This is why I held on to the old assy's removed from my DCD-2700's and why I will be making a standoff that fits with the early plastic spindle disks.

And this is the main reason that I have gone into detail about repairing this player. Not so much to stroke my ego as to share info that might help one of you keep their fine old machine playing fine music.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

OK, so one more last note for today.

While doing some internet brousing I came across some info relating to the KSS-240A and it's sensitivity to resonance. Sony published a service bulletin in 1995 regarding this and produced a small brass weight to be attached to the pickup to address this problem. I have hand made some weights and now install them on KSS-240A pickups as SOP now.

More info can be found in my DCD-2700 thread starting with post#103:
https://www.audiokarma.org/forums/i...player-mod-thread.755995/page-6#post-12386419

Here are a few photos of a weight and it installed in a DCD-1290:



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

2 days ago I made a large order with Mouser, it's already shipped and should be in my hands tomorrow.

In the mean time some random thoughts:

HiFi Engine has 2 pdf versions of the SM.
https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/denon/dcd-3000.shtml

One is a 26.9mb hi-res and the other a low-res 6.2mb. I didn't figure out what use the low-res copy would be until I tried to find page 42 & 43 in the hi-res copy. These pages are the parts list and exploded view of the loading mech. They are missing from the better SM but there in the smaller one. The resolution isn't all that great but good enough to be useful for working on the loading mech. So download both versions of the SM.

The loading mech didn't have any difficult or tricky details to give any problems when taking it apart to clean & lube. The closest thing to tricky is getting the tray guide rod out. You turn the entire mech over and remove a countersunk screw from one end, that allows the rod to be removed. And there is a small guide block that holds the rod that has to be unscrewed and removed before you can get all of the tray loading gears removed. There are 2 screws on the top of inner end of the tray that have to be removed to let it slide off.

I cleaned everything mechanical with warm water and simple dishwashing soap. For lube I used some light machine oil with teflon and my favorite Rivolta SKD-4002 synthetic grease. It's easy to find here in Europe, I don't know about the USA. Great stuff.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

The power Supply is pretty straightforward and simple, no big surprises here. Compared to the DCD-2700 it has larger main filter caps, 3300µF compared to 2200µF. The voltage regulators have some nice heat sinks attached, also an enhancement over the 2700.



Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

 

[Bratwurst7s]

It's been interesting to note the differences between the DCD-3000 and S10, especially the Asian market models. For instance the DCD-S10 power supply.



The interesting extra parts here (aside from the doubled bridge rectifier diodes) are the 2.2µF/50v and 0.01µF/50v caps in parallel with the main filter caps in the analog section.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

For the main filter caps I bought United Chemi-Con KMH 6800µF/50v. They have 10mm snap-in leads. But the pcb and 3300µF Elna caps installed have 15mm lead spacing. Since I've sworn off drilling boards I used some 1.5mm² solid core wire to make some short lead extensions for the KMH's. Then I glued some 5mm thick o-rings to the bottom of the caps for clearance.



After installing them and trimming the leads they are actually quite short, perhaps 10 to 12mm. So I'm not to worried about the leads acting as inductors.

Cheers,
James