|
Review 3 of 46
Price Paid:
$3500.00
from can't recall Summary:
it's a long story. The SCD-1 has been a long and awesome learning experience as I discovered an "upgrade underground" based on the SCD-1 cult devoted to extreme listening satisfaction.
This started to make a greater impression on me when I took my unit in for repair after I had done a stupid thing with it, tried to switch out interconnects with the machine playing a disk. DON'T. You may blow an output stage.
The repair shop tells me they rarely see an unmodified SCD-1 but they see a lot of them. it seems that this unit is widely perceived by afficionados as THE hot rod box.
I had sent mine into Richard Kern for extensive rebuilding and consequently got into the mod thing. When the parts that the accountants won, an unimpressive clock ( a standard quartz crystal in a can), op-amps, caps, regulators, and resistors are switched for the audiomod upgrade kits, the unit opens up and delivers on a whole 'nother plane.
I was still having some urges for better sound a year later that got me motivated to liberally treat resonant areas inside the unit with various types of marigo dots and Combak Harmonix "tuning bases", especially the steel table that the linear transport motor is affixed to. I had simultaneously put some bybee quantum filters between the power supply and main box of my 12 year old pre-amp so I cannot say with specific clarity which was contributing what. However, the sound came together with such tonal perfection and listenability that it was possible to groove away for hours with huge, voluptuous, billowing, cavernous sound that moved me close to the holistic musical experinece.
I think the lesson from this is that careful, but thorough internal vibration damping is essential to bring out the best in this model, regardless of how much tweaking has gone into new parts.
That done, and one channel recently fried thanks to my impatience, there was nothing else to do but listen in mono one evening until the repair shop opened the next morning. I was expecting the mono to sound collapsed and dead as only one channel was available. Amazingly, the mono with the right recordings, those without much L-R difference, still sounded big, spacious, and involving. The mono sounded "phatter" than the majority of theoretically good systems do in stereo, so go figure.
The last chapter for now as being thoroughly bummed out and waiting for parts to arrive for the SCD there wasn't much to do but cruise the web for new ideas.
Kern can now install the SuperclockII that is rumored to substantially outperform the original superclock. If it does, that would be good enough to be scary. There are also some new mods he can do to the transport board which one assumes tightens up the behavior of the linear motor. Then I discovered an entirely different philosophical approach coming out of Germany from a company called Vacuum State. They make a board that bypasses almost the entire analog section and the standard filters. There's a guy in the USA named Warren Gregoire who will do this as well as upgrade some caps on the digital board, all news to me. I have never heard the Vacuum State board, but it is reported to be another major leap in performance.
This is the wildest part of all. The Vacuum State board operates in parallel to the standard analog board, so you will have a double set of analog outputs, one coming off the original analog board, or as tweaked up as you please by Kern, and you can simultaneously have the Vacuum State driven outputs running and switch bacak and forth. At least thats how Warren Gregoire explains it. Whatever you feel like, the SCD-1 is an impressive starting point that can be used as is as a quite fine player, or it can be taken in many directions by the upgrade crowd. Now I think of it like a classic car sought after by collector-rebuilders that has more than one final interpretation. Strengths:
The SCD-1 has serious first rate engineering in it that is not found in many similar products. It has an outstanding transport mechanism that is finished like a museum grade work of art and first quality R-core transformers in beautiful rounded anti resonant cans and a fanatic case made of multiple vibration dissapating materials Weaknesses:
there are limitations and design compromises that aren't visible to the naked eye. It appears that the engineers and the accountants each won a round to get the finished product to market Similar Products Used:
listen to a wide range of latest and not so latest everything... transports, DACs, cables, U name It
| 
4.98 of 5
5 of 5
4 of 5
