Sony Ta F555esx Manual Arts
Some may have seen this new (2nd hand) purchase I made in the 'vintage audio' topic. Here I intend to look into the Sony TA-700ES in greater detail and also compare it to another couple of excellent integrated amps I have, the 40w quasimodo (Cafad has recently reviewed) and my 150w diy honey badger(info on diyaudio forums) I made a few years back. First some pics.Recent purchase from Germany (ebay) They seems to have lots of excellent old sony products over there.Amp is in great condition for it's age. Just a few minor scratches that are hardly noticeable. I have not cleaned the amp. What you see is how it has arrived.Being an ES series sony has used excellent parts.
Starting with gold inputs for phono and cd input.Here you have a new Australian plugtop installed to replace the German type. Das nice.Tops off. This is very clean inside with a very low amount of dust inside. This was obviously kept in a nice clean environment during its lifetime. The techier guys(and non techies) should appreciate the great Sony ES engineering inside this beast.
Large Sony EI transformer, green Nichicon Muse capacitors, some Elna Silmics(or cerafine, not sure which) in there as well. Big ass power caps 2x 12000uf and 2x 4700uf Great supply brand. Sony has used some quality components here these are showing no signs of stress, no bulging tops or anything. This particular transformer in this amp has 240v connections on it so it was swapped from Germanys 220v to our 240v tap (top left red and purple wires swapped).Good Quality large annodised cast heatsink (unlike a lot of amps of this time that use an L piece of aluminium with fins formed by scrapping them out of that L piece, like NAD)Large power supply caps with bits of foam on top. What's the foam for you say. Well a perspex top sits on the foam mechanically fixing the caps to stop micro vibrations or microphonics if your a valve man(just part of that sony engineering here). If anyone has info on who made the 'Great supply caps' that would be great?A couple of quality Elna caps here and many green Nichicon Muse caps in the mix.Pic from The Vintage Org.
How it looked when new.Sony's first amp series to have its 'Gibraltar Chassis' made from polyester, calcium and carbon to reduce chassis vibrations. (insane).This thing comes in at 18.3Kg. 2 x 110w continuous Rms into 8 ohms (0.004% THD).
2 x 145w continuous rms into 4 ohms (0.008% THD) 20-20k both chanels driven. Impressive specs.Simon. Once the visual inspection was over it was time to check the adjustments on this thing. DC offset was 1mv on one channel and 2mv on the other all good there. DC bias adjustment showed near enough to 15mv on each channel. A very good sign as the reccomended adjustment was 15mv. Upon playing with the adjustment pots I realised that I couldn't get them better than it already was.
One thing to note to do in the future is to change the pots to a multi turn type to help adjusting these easier (especially on the offset adjustments).Time for some critical listening. Time for some jamming (with my toes). This is a diyers room as can be seen by the hodge podge of stuff lying around the place. Oh yes I finally purchased a Keces power supply shown by the retina burning blue led light (first mod will be to make this thing a non retina burning blue led).
Sony Ta F555esx Manual Arts Video
Notice the red bass trap on the right hand side seems to be a bit lower than the LHS due to the pet cat's climbing preference. Bet the cat had a nerve turd when riding that thing off the wall.A note about this system. I am running computer audio.
My music is stored on my NAS (network storage) in the study. From there it connects to a 'odroid' (like a raspberry pi except more powerfull) via the blue cat 5 cable seen at the top right of the pic.
The odroid is basically a mini pc which is running linux ( i hate linux). The odroid is like a traffic cop, my windows 8 tablet talks to it and it gets the data from the nas and outputs it to my DAC (silver thing on top of the retina burner). The odroid also outputs video and audio when running XBMC via hdmi to my pioneer home theater receiver so I can watch downloaded stuff when I want. The dac is a $100 ebay AK4396 that has been modded with a heap of good quality electronic thingameebobs, some rond in shape and some square in shape.
From the dac it exits analogue goodness via the purple interconnects.From the purple things and into a diy rca splitter to give audio to two amps at a time. My on the fly test rig comprising of 1.5mm twin and earth house lighting circuit wiring/speaker cable into a switch box to change amps on the fly.Amps volume matched using pink noise and a Db meter. First comparing the sony to the quasimodo 40w (reviewed by Cafad not long ago).Ma ma ma my So ony.Qua qua qua Quas imodo.Yep.
Kitty!Killing in the name of Fat bottomed girls.(interesting). I guess we could have had 'fat bottomed girls killing in the name of kitty' as well?attachment= now I really want to attach a picture of a.not fat bottomed, but more of a Brazillian round bottomed girl here just to show my appreciation for the song but unfortunatly the mods may make this long post disappear similar to the Salma Hayek thread.Mind wandering.mmmmm those were the days.jpgAnyway back to the comparison.Quasimodo:-The Quasimodo is an excellent amplifier designed to sound similar to a valve amplifier.
This amp produce a smooth, warm, rounded sound with slightly softer highs and an enjoyable mid range. The bass is decent with this amp but there is ever so slightly less control than the sony. This one is quite forgiving of poor quality interconects and speaker cables I think because of the slight lesser edge to the high frequencies.Sony Ta-F700ES:-Compared to the sony, the quasimodo sounds a bit muddle or smeared. This amp seems to be quicker with a bit more bass impact than the quasi. There is more treble and also more more mid range with this as well. Not one range is over powered by the others(even presentation). It has more slam to it (quicker) the transients on both the leading edge and trailing edge of notes seem to stop faster.
With this amp playing I can disect the layers of the music more than ever before. It has better channel separation and soundstage compared to anything else I have owned and as such I can pin point where instruments are better than before. An example of this is when listening to music with some background singers in the mix which is set deep into the mix, I can hear more singers voices without trying as hard.
The quasi seemed to be blended more(or you have to listen harder). Now I can hear the difference (more of) between a real piano playing and a synthesised piano playing.Now because of this brutal clarity and honesty of this amp, there can be some drawbacks. This is much more unforgiving on the interconnects and cables connected to the system and also on poorly recorded/mastered music.man this is taking forever.more to come.
Now we'll add the diy ' Honey badger' into the mix.As can be seen by the case, this has had a busy/hard life many experiments and changes over the years. Nothing a badger can't handle. This is a 150w class AB. More can be found atCompared to the Sony, the soundstage is set further back. This has a sweet sound and you could listen to this for a long time without fatigue.
The highs are between the Qusimodos softer and the sonys more dominant. The bass is slightly less than the Sony (just) and was very well controlled. This is quite similar to the quasi but less coloured than the quasi with slight more treble detail.
Less edgier but more sweeter than the Sony.A highly recommended amp for someone wanting to diy a powerful amp with finess and sweetness.Thus end my comparisons of three great integrated amplifiers.ooops forgot a last pic.These are my diy speakers (1st ones ever made with many years worth of changes and experimentation). They particularly like the slight extra bass of the Sony amp as the room nodes I have can suck a little bit out in that region.RegardsSimon. Hopefully Simon doesn't object to these being posted in here. Just knock them out if inappropriateI popped the top on my TA-F444esii and took a couple of snaps:2 x 12000uf great supplies for the PS. A similar bar over the top of them as with Simons to minimise vibration (?)Heat sink is a much less heavy duty designTransformer is a bando (?)Caps throughout look to be Nippon chemocon nxd.
SONY_TA-F30_Amplifier…
I'm not sure if that is original to the amp but I have seen similar vintage Sony with these ones. I didn't spot any Elna caps to my knowledge. Unfortunately it looks like these 4 x 1000uf are in the process of losing their lunchI kinda forgot to take a general layout pic after noticing the caps doh! Gold plated RCA on the phono input but normal on the rest. I couldn't spot a phono board tbh. Might be wedged up the front with the mm/mc selector.Buggered if I know if its any good TBH. Not sure what impact the bad caps have on the sound either.
Probably shouldn't use it eh?Cheers. Caps throughout look to be Nippon chemocon nxd. I'm not sure if that is original to the amp but I have seen similar vintage Sony with these ones. I didn't spot any Elna caps to my knowledge.
Unfortunately it looks like these 4 x 1000uf are in the process of losing their lunchI kinda forgot to take a general layout pic after noticing the caps doh! Gold plated RCA on the phono input but normal on the rest. I couldn't spot a phono board tbh. Might be wedged up the front with the mm/mc selector.Buggered if I know if its any good TBH. Not sure what impact the bad caps have on the sound either.
Probably shouldn't use it eh?CheersThat looks like glue to hold the larger caps in place during the manufacture and subsequent transportation stage, as opposed to the electrolyte leaking onto the board. I wouldn't be overly concerned. Is the same material evident at the base of all four of the larger blue caps?Edited July 14, 2014 by petemac. NIce set of posts. I have the Sony 530ES that I bought back in the late 80's while living in Austria. Still have it. The source selector spindle got broken inside of the selector switch during moving back and forth overseas.
But I have held onto this amplifier because of the build quality and the effortless sound it put out with some ELAC speakers I had at the time.I would like to take it out of storage and have it serviced and checked over but don't know of anybody in Melbourne capable of such a job,They sure were a nice looking series of kit though, I could never find the wooden side plates for the 530 to give it that really classy finish though.Thanks for the posts, nice job. Item: Cayin CS-88A Integrated Valve AmplifierLocation: Central Coast NSWPrice: $2,750 onoItem Condition: Mint, As NewReason for selling: Upgrading/Change of directionPayment Method: Pickup - Cash, EFT, Paypal + 2.6%, COD OnlyExtra Info:I have owned this amp since July this year. Originally purchased in preparation for a setup with Klipsch Cornwall III speakers, however I went a different route and ultimately purchased Revel M106’s. While this is an exceptional sounding valve amplifier it is not really matched well with the Revel’s and I will be upgrading to a Benchmark system. The build quality is exceptional, regardless of price. Selling to help fund the upgrade.This amp is in mint as-new condition, with no more that 5 hours use on it total. I have all of the original packaging and accessories.
Hiya - my son came over from the UK for Christmas so I got him to collect and bring back a Sony WM-5 cassette walkman as a birthday present and summer project. It was not working and in far from pristine condition but after considering a variety of different models, I decided I loved the look and design of this model best. The WM-5 is a relatively rare metal model that closely resembles the design of the WM-2 so I've referred to youtube and a digital copy of the WM-2 service manual to work on it. This is my first walkman project.I could hear the motor whirring when I put in batteries and pressed play but the capstans didn't spin. I suspected the belt had perished and confirmed that was the case when I took it apart. Note that, if you have one of these and want to take it apart, the play/ff/rw/stop buttons can get caught on the very thin aluminium fascia that surrounds them so you have to be very gentle working the body out of the case.
Also, take good photos of the inside boards and thin wires in case you accidentally break them or for resoldering them.I found the original belt had turned to black goo and it took some time to clean it all from the wheels. I replaced the belt with one of similar diameter but 1mm width, which I bought in a pack of belts of varying sizes from Ebay. The buttons seemed to be working so I put it back together and have been testing it. My advice to anyone wanting to undertake this sort of project is to have all the tools, parts, DC power wart, grease and oil when you take your device apart - you don't want to have to take it apart more than once or twice as you increase the risk that something will break each time you do.I have got it working but I still have some issues to chase down (any help you can provide would be appreciated):1. According to the part list for the WM-2, the dimensions of the belt are 44x0.9, which presumably is the diameter and width in mm? I've fitted one that looks pretty close to 44m diameter but it isn't easy to take an accurate measure of the diameter of a rubber belt! I have read that a non-standard belt can cause higher wow and flutter but this belt at least proves the motor mechanism works.2. The ff button works fine and the motor action is smooth and relatively quiet but the rw button is unreliable.
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It will rewind for several seconds and then stop. If you press the stop button and then press the rw button again. It will start the action then stop quickly. Repeating will go back to rewinding for several seconds and then stop. The rewind action is noisy and not smooth. Also, sometimes, after you press the stop button after rewinding/ffwding, the left capstan starts turning for a few seconds before it stops?!3. The play and stop buttons work fine except the play action is noisy to my ear (I can't remember how quiet/noisy walkman used to be!) and the noisiness varies metronomically.
This might be causing the wow I'm hearing on the tape. However, I only have one tape to test the unit at present (I will locate some more) and while I think I detect some wow it might be the tape (it is an old and low quality children's story recording).4. I have ordered some replacement screws for the several that are missing but I can't locate a replacement perspex window for my broken one. I see that you can get a replacement for the WM-D6 but I cannot find anything online to replace what has to be the most common walkman window in existence!5. The matt black paint on the case has been scraped off in a few places and I would like to touch it up but don't know what product is best to use.I have thoroughly enjoyed my summer project so far, and I would dearly love to get it looking and running as well as it did in the 80s so any advice and encouragement would be gratefully received.
I used to own one of these, and have also owned the similar TA-E90ES and TA-N90ES pre and power amp.Despite appearances they really only seem to gel with an easy speaker load.They're big, heavy, well made, and I think, beautiful, but I'd recommend using them with easy to drive speakers.When used with speakers with a moderately difficult load, they don't get hot or blow up or anything, but you can tell the system isn't quite singing.The person who bought the 777ES from me thought the same thing.As for sound, they've got the typical clean and clear Japanese sound. It's not remote controllable either, in case that matters.I currently own a TA-F333ESR integrated from the late 80s, and this manages a difficult speaker load better than these other amps.