Hi everyone, I am new to DCC, but I have restored some vintage electronics before (self-taught amateur)
I have a Technics RS-DC10 on the way in the mail, so I don’t yet know too much about its condition. Seller claims it works with analog tapes, untested with digital tapes. Been in storage for a long time.
I understand that the capacitors definitely need to be replaced right away. Does anyone have a list of which capacitor values I need; so I can order them and have them at the ready when my player arrives? Thanks!
Do you have access to a hot-air desoldering station for surface-mount components? If not, then be extremely careful when removing the old capacitors. The circuit traces on those boards are very thin, and the crud that comes out of those leaky surface-mount caps just loves to get underneath the conformal coating and eat away the traces, or undermine the pads so that they’ll lift off and break away at the slightest stress.
(Also, note that the part #s drdcc gave above are for the through-hole equivalent capacitors, not the surface-mount ones.)
Cool; thanks! I do have a soldering station with a hot air thingy. Thanks for the tip; I will try to be careful so as to not tear off the circuit board traces.
Some sellers have so-called “hi-fi audio” capacitors. Does this actually matter, or is it just snake oil?
No, but quality does help to prevent fails in the future, so don’t try to save some money by buying some random Chinese ones, the Japanese manufacturers are all decent nowadays but have different product lines each, just check what makes sense for you also in terms of shipping cost. It may seem oversimplified, but I don’t know of any non-Japanese high quality mainstream capacitor manufacturers.
To be honest, this seems risky to me regarding ripping of pads and replacing electrolytic capacitors with some other style of capacitor is not a wise choice unless you really understand the circuit in detail.
I find it too and use a slightly different mechanical removal method: I cut and pull carefully the aluminium cylinder with the rest, than desolder two remaining stripes from the board with the wick. This method is very quick and proven to be gentle to conductors
Thanks everyone for the tips and advice. Unfortunately, my Technics RS-DC10 never arrived from the U.S., it got lost in shipping (Pitney Bowes; eBay Global Shipping Program).
I found another player located closer to me (Holland–I am in Norway), a Philips DCC 600. This one did not seem to need any restoration, beyond just re-affixing a motor which had popped loose during shipping. Nothing was broken, so the motor just clipped back in, and I had to re-seat the flat belt.
This player does not appear to use SMD capacitors, and everything seems to work great. So I have not planned to do any further work on this player, unless any of you advice some specific replacements.
Later I happened to find a player for sale locally here in Norway (very rare). A DCC130 portable. For this one I understand I definitely should replace the caps, so I will be looking into that.
Shipping from the USA to Europe is extremely slow lately, because of Trump’s sabotage at the U.S. Mail and because of huge increased volume because of the pandemic. 6 weeks of shipping time is not unusual. Many eBay sellers have given up shipping between the continents because it takes so long that they have to give purple their money back even if the package is still underway. I myself had at least two packages that looked like they got lost for a while but were probably just sitting in a post office somewhere.
The DCC 600 (and all other second generation recorders) are great for collectors who don’t want to do any soldering. Most of the time the belt needs to be replaced and there’s a soft-plastic gear that will eventually fail, but the capacitors are (almost?) all through-hole and should survive for quite some time. I love the mechanisms and I love how they look. They may not have a turbo drive mechanism or title recording unlike the 3rd generation recorders, but they do have a VU meter. And they have separate buttons for fast forward/rewind vs. track forward/backward.
