Kenwood KD 990 recapping

[Black Stuart]

Very pleased to find out that recapping the control PCB for this deck is really cheap. About 10 years ago a German did all the work and the caps almost entirely can be replaced by Panasonic NHG which are really cheap.

I know that a transistor has gone on my first Kenwood deck and found a Russian site that bought up all the JVC and Kenwood (JVC bought out Kenwood) parts.

I may decide to replace not only the the lytic caps but also the diodes and transistors. With a bearing assembly that will easily last a thousand years (unlike the little Austrians Reich) I shall effectively have two new t/ts.

[bob orbell]

Bloody hell Stuart, have we got to put up with you for that long --. Bob

[Greg.]

Originally Posted by Black Stuart

I shall effectively have two new t/ts.

Wow, with two, I’d start a DJ service

[Black Stuart]

The Kenwood KDs are far too good for DJing Greg, I'd leave that to inferior noisy t/ts.

As the first only cost me the Euro equivalent of £120 I have a choice (1) to sell it skeletal as the plinth is damaged on one corner having been dropped en route and badly packed, surprising as it came from Germany or (2) try an experiment I've been toying with for some time - to find a way to remove the connecting plug-ins in the headshell and arm so that the tonearm wring runs straight through from cartridge tags to phono stage.

I'd copy the innovative solid core high purity silver wire that Kenwood used but inside air cored FEP thin wall dialectric. To remove obstructions in the signal path right after the source ie. plug-ins/RCAs/XLRs 'should' mean the integrity of the signal is less affected.

If I bugger the arm I can still sell the deck as skeletal as many use this version of the KDs with other far more costly arms, Hugo on VE uses an arm/cartridge combo that costs around £8K. No other deck I know gives one the availability to fit 4 arms, a bit excessive for me but that opportunity exists.

If I was younger I would try an air bearing arm but I'm happy with using the Kenwood engineers design - one of the best gimbal arms as Doddington said.

[Black Stuart]

My first KD990 went out of action when the 2 x 2200uF/25V power caps went leaky. I just stashed it and used my second KD deck.

I bought a big bottle of Goo-Gone a couple of years ago and thought it was worth a try to remove the gunge which had dried up - worked a treat. I've cleaned up the surrounding diodes and can't see why they should'nt work fine.

All the electros were Elna and a series now defunct. I shall be replacing all bar the power caps with Panasonic FR, hard to believe that the price of the electros for both decks is about £9. Nichicon RZ 2200uF 25V are half the size of the original power caps and rated for 10000 hours.

Removing the boards was easy, those Kenwood engineers thought of everything. If I need to replace the transistors they too are easily available from a Russian company that bought out the Samsung/Kenwood spares.