Marantz CD63 & CD63 KI Signature Upgrades

[337alant]

Don't waist that sort of money on any CD player, they are history and digital playback kicks them in to touch IMO
I have a CD63KI Sig and my Cam Azur 640C mk2 kicked its ar*e so yes its sweet but its just to old hat to throw that sort of money at it.
Also its vam cdm12.1 is nothing more than a £25 transport so also nothing special IMO
Sell it and move on is my advice, I gave mine to my eldest son


Alan

[walpurgis]

CD replay can be superb if you go about it the right way.

[RobbieGong]

I was just curious as to what these upgrades are about and what they bring to the table so thanks for the posts guys. I plan some big changes over the next few years but I'm dreaming really as funds just aint there. When good fortune does smile down upon me, the cdp will probably be the last piece to upgrade (as I'm a vinyl junkie), at which point I'd seek the forums view on what they regard as genuinely top notch cdp upgrade to the 63KI, new or vintage at not daft money

[lovejoy]

I picked up an entry level Marantz a couple of years ago at a car boot sale for £7. It skipped and was pretty battered but I took it on as a bit of a project and restored and bettered it over a period of a couple of months as time allowed. It was never the last word in detail or insight, but it was a very musical and rhythmic sounding player and was a joy to listen to. The circuit board itself was the same as the KI signature, just populated with cheaper/less components and of course the chassis didn't have all of the extra bracing of the KI sig.

I set about improving things like decoupling power supplies, adding extra filtering and upgrading capacitors and regulators to start off with. Much the same as what Fidelity Audio albeit using well specced but not the boutique components that they use. It was the improvements to the regulators and splitting analogue and digital power supplies that really made the differences. The gains mostly being drops in the noise floor giving greater depth and insight into the music. The general character remained the same (which was a good thing) but you just got closer to the performance with every upgrade.

Just as a guide though, I spent no more than around £40 on components in total, that was including a roll of bitumen damping material which I used inside the case, so the commercial modifications seem astronomically expensive to me for much the same thing and just getting someone else to do it for you.

I'm not exactly a soldering master but I enjoyed doing the mods and the CD player board is a pretty easy one to work with as there is little in the way of surface mount components, so if you have any soldering skills at all, then you'll be able to take on things like adding mains filters and replacing caps with bigger/better quality ones. From experience, if you're going to stick with the Marantz then better to make some internal mods than to add a DAC as the digital output isn't really up to much (unless you start modding that as well).

[syzygy]

The best upgrade that I have made for my cd67se was to purchase a Peachtree dac-it. That is my 1st move into the 21st century.