I finally received the capacitors that I needed for the amp board so I finished the recap and completed the messy process of replacing the thermal paste. Because this unit uses the integrated output transistor packs it has a lot of surface area to cover with thermal paste. The most difficult step in the process was getting the screws in that hold the packs to the heat sink. You need a 90 degree screw driver and a lot of patience to get it done. You can also see that the new LED lights have been installed. Once again the SX-650 is different from other models I have worked on. The 850 and larger units have bases like Christmas lights and you just pop out the old and pop in the new LED. These I had to remove from the bases and directly solder to the existing wiring. It was also nice to remove the wire nuts that the previous person had added.
The LED lights all work great and it was nice to put the knobs back on and get it looking good again. Next step is to put it into my office for a little burn-in time.
So I could not wait.. I moved it into my office and hooked it up to a real antenna and to the DAC I have running with my PC. Tuner works great and all knobs and switches are working without any noise or static at all – Thanks Deoxit! I plan to hook up a turntable to ensure that the phono stage is also good and then do some burn in. I work in IT and work from home so I should be able to run it through some pretty long sessions to get it heated up. As you can see I am running it with some small Wharfedales and I also have a small 10″ Velodyne running off the speaker B outputs. Makes for a nice vintage setup. I will take some better pictures of the finished unit when I have better light. Trevor – It should be ready real soon..