SL-PG5 (originally ~£300) possibly the ultimate incarnation of the PG line. The prior PG480 is in WhatHifi's Top 25 cd players of all time.
£50 from a well known auction site, initial impressions are a slightly better build, with a plastic bottom under the metal chassis which makes it feel a lot less tinny. The metal looking drawer front is silver plastic, oh well. Scratches on the top cover and a foam foot missing nothing major. It wouldn't play one cd but after cleaning the laser it did.
This one features Panasonic Purism capacitors. Initially I thought they measured a bit off for ESR so did a full recap but then found the meter needed recalibration and they were ok all along! Oh well would have done it anyway.
Is there anything special about Purism caps, probably but I assume that technology has been incorporated or evolved within the 25 years since, in Panasonic's current range of FC,FM,FR etc so good caps but probably not covetable.
Below, one of the 1uf Nichicon ES capacitors peeking out from under the tray, this replaces the existing tiny coupling caps between dac and opamps. Mounting it below, there seems to be enough room so maybe a small film cap would have been ok there but anyway ES will more than do. The board underneath contains all the cd operation logic and the dac in one. It is static sensitive and the motors have to be desoldered to take the board off. The date on the board there is 21 June 2001.
All the caps on the board replaced with Panasonic FR,FC, Silmic2 whatever was to hand, but all good low ESR caps the original non audio caps were unbranded, probably Panasonic. The opamps power rails increased from 100uf to 330uf. The all important coupling caps are Audio Note Seiryu 100uf bipolars replacing the 47uf Purisms. Snipped out the four muting caps and the small yellow HF filter caps that look like resistors near the RCA outs (Ref Lampizator's snip it article). A future tweek might be replacing all the resistors on the final output path with a single Vishay 1 or 2 watt.
Amazingly it works and sounds very good. I may have to replace the laser as it's struggling a bit and there are no adjustments on this one.
£50 from a well known auction site, initial impressions are a slightly better build, with a plastic bottom under the metal chassis which makes it feel a lot less tinny. The metal looking drawer front is silver plastic, oh well. Scratches on the top cover and a foam foot missing nothing major. It wouldn't play one cd but after cleaning the laser it did.
This one features Panasonic Purism capacitors. Initially I thought they measured a bit off for ESR so did a full recap but then found the meter needed recalibration and they were ok all along! Oh well would have done it anyway.
Is there anything special about Purism caps, probably but I assume that technology has been incorporated or evolved within the 25 years since, in Panasonic's current range of FC,FM,FR etc so good caps but probably not covetable.
Below, one of the 1uf Nichicon ES capacitors peeking out from under the tray, this replaces the existing tiny coupling caps between dac and opamps. Mounting it below, there seems to be enough room so maybe a small film cap would have been ok there but anyway ES will more than do. The board underneath contains all the cd operation logic and the dac in one. It is static sensitive and the motors have to be desoldered to take the board off. The date on the board there is 21 June 2001.
All the caps on the board replaced with Panasonic FR,FC, Silmic2 whatever was to hand, but all good low ESR caps the original non audio caps were unbranded, probably Panasonic. The opamps power rails increased from 100uf to 330uf. The all important coupling caps are Audio Note Seiryu 100uf bipolars replacing the 47uf Purisms. Snipped out the four muting caps and the small yellow HF filter caps that look like resistors near the RCA outs (Ref Lampizator's snip it article). A future tweek might be replacing all the resistors on the final output path with a single Vishay 1 or 2 watt.
Amazingly it works and sounds very good. I may have to replace the laser as it's struggling a bit and there are no adjustments on this one.
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