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Sony SCD-777ES interesting mods

Kamen

Kamen

New Member
Hi, this is my first time to post on here, but I have been a member for long time. I have learned a lot from here! Thanks everyone here!

But I have come across a very interesting example of a Sony SCD-777ES with some very interesting mods in it. I can tell there is a board from VSE and that's about it. They use some very thin copper wires to connect between boards and I am not sure if this is the correct way to do it? And I don't think it is very professional. I have never since this kind of connection before. My questions are is it save with this kind of bare copper wire inside the player? What kind of mod is that? Will that effect the value of the player and how bad or how good? I have included some images of the mod. Please let me know if you guys need more info. Thank you for any help again.

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Kamen
 
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They're buss bars. They can vary in size & thickness depending on voltage requirements. You're more likely to see them in class A & AB hi pwr mega buck amps.
 
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They are stupid.
Result is a bunch of antennas due to the large area loops created. That will pick up all kind of noise radiated from the components and re-inject it in the connection points...
The traditional way of running the buses keeps the power and ground (return) paths close together to minimize those antenna loops.
 
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Lesterbest said:
They're buss bars. They can vary in size & thickness depending on voltage requirements. You're more likely to see them in class A & AB hi pwr mega buck amps.
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Did you see the fine copper wires suspended and running from one side to the other? I didn't see them until I looked closer.
 
Kamen said:
Hi, this is my first time to post on here, but I have been a member for long time. I have learned a lot from here! Thanks everyone here!

But I have come across a very interesting example of a Sony SCD-777ES with some very interesting mods in it. I can tell there is a board from VSE and that's about it. They use some very thin copper wires to connect between boards and I am not sure if this is the correct way to do it? And I don't think it is very professional. I have never since this kind of connection before. My questions are is it save with this kind of bare copper wire inside the player? What kind of mod is that? Will that effect the value of the player and how bad or how good? I have included some images of the mod. Please let me know if you guys need more info. Thank you for any help again.

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Kamen
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Send those pictures to bill thalman who is the east coast Vaccum State rep. He can tell you exactly what you have. If it's a Vacuum State mod, your looking at 2,000 dollars worth of work there. How does it sound?
 
Thank you for the info. I will send the images to him. About how it sounds, I am not a expert, all I can tell if the system is sounded just like a live performance should be a pretty good system. The 777ES sounded very live to me. I was using it with the Pioneer Elite VSX-59TXi and KEF Q60 and I can tell it's very clear, almost like I can tell where's each instrument set when they were recording that piece. May be I am wrong, But I am very happy with what I've experienced. I am welcome with any input for how to become a better listener or better way to appreciated a good system. Thank you again!

Kamen
 
The VSE mods are highly regarded. The vertical PCB is part of the mod. I have no idea if the bare copper wires are the way the mod is supposed to be, but I agree that they don't look right. Send some pics to one of VSEs US reps, as suggested, and see what he says.
 
If those wires are carrying signals, I would have used shielded cable, or at least twisted pair. Or if it's power of some sort, I would have routed them along the chassis.
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They are obviously carrying both. Some even go to the RCA line outputs (first pic). The fact that it still sounds OK is due to the original design that probably had low impedance paths in those places, minimizing the influences of stray EM fields.
If that's what people get for $2000, I am in the wrong trade.
 
Hi everyone, I've just got the reply from Bill Thalmann of Music Technology INC. Here is the quote from his reply of my questions.

What you have is a Vacuum State Electronics modified player. That was an extensive upgrade to the player which was available, over its lifetime, in a number of iterations. Is there a label on the rear with any identifying text?

There probably are a pair of added RCA jacks on the back panel above the stock output jacks. These are the output of the VSE upgrade. The installation of that did not disable the stock electronics, but rather ran in parallel with them, so you can actually listen to both and compare. The VSE output level is substantially lower, but otherwise should sound vastly superior to the original.

Those thin wires are 9999% pure silver and are lacquered so they are insulated electrically. They should not pose a danger.

Those upgrades started at $2k and went up from there.


I am feeling better, at least knowing it is save and will not have any interference and it sounds very good!

Kamen
 
Sure, pure silver is the best conducting metal, but nobody wires their house with silver wire. Using thicker copper wires gets you the same performance at way less cost. Oh, there's skin effect, but that's not significant at audio frequencies.
 
wa2ise said:
Sure, pure silver is the best conducting metal, but nobody wires their house with silver wire. Using thicker copper wires gets you the same performance at way less cost. Oh, there's skin effect, but that's not significant at audio frequencies.
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Silver is only a 2.5% to 5% better conductor than copper. Max bucks for minimum gain.
 
The only gain is capturing all the digital noise from inside the box (including the display noise) with those antennas. Screened coaxial cables where invented for a reason, otherwise we will still use exposed wires like Edison and Bell.
As for conductivity any mediocre engineer knows that conductivity is not all in the formula, the inverse of the area is there too. Those super thin wires have higher resistance than "normal" AWG copper ones.
 
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