CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[antorsae]

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With so many mods available for the Marquee/s sometimes it is difficult to know what each mod does, and what different people rank them as per their PERCEIVED enhancement.

I suggest each member who's TESTED enhancements to the marquee ranks them from 0 to 10 with some notes on perceived benefits (performance, reliability, etc.).

Here's a list of mods:

Frankenyokes (1292 Yokes w/o astig windings)
Frankenyokes II (1292 Yokes w astig windings)
HD10F Lenses
HFQ900 Lenses
VIM 03P (need description link)
Dragan mods
Red C-element
Moome HD Card (1.2 HDMI) w/ gamma
Moome FulllHD Card (1.3 HDMI) w/ gamma V2
LVPS Fan Mod
HVPS Resistor mods
Mike Parker Mikron Mods VIM & VNB
DraganM HD maintenance upgrades

ALL: If you have done other mods you'd like to be included, PM and I'll update the index with the mod and a link, thx!

[nuttall_chris]

Before I comment on the mods let me say from experience, if you have a working projector that you are happy with, just leave it be, many of these mods could leave you very frustrated with a projector that no longer functions properly.

Been there done that got frustrated and went digital, now on to the mods.

Frankenyokes (1292 Yokes w/o astig windings)
3 out of 10
- noticeably smaller spot size on my 8500 with much larger electronic focus range. The lack of astig winding caused problems with corner focus. 1080p looked great, with scan lines just touching in the center of the screen.

Frankenyokes II (1292 Yokes w astig windings)
5 out of 10 on my 8500
- noticeably smaller spot size on my 8500 with much larger electronic focus range. 1080p looked great, with scan lines just touching over the whole screen. The addition of the astig windings brought the whole screen into perfect focus.

4 out fo 10 on my modded 9500Ultra with LUGs
- I'm giving these a slightly lower rating with the higher end marquee because I was easily able to get clear scanlines without the Frankenyokes, add them made the scanlines so visible at my viewing distance I had to change the spot shape to close the gap between the lines.

HD10F Lenses
2 out of 10
- I went from GT17 lenses to 10F on both my 8500LC and my 9500Ultra, and in both cases I switched back to the GT17 lenses. As I noted in a thread a couple of years ago (looks like Kal deleted my thread when he cleaned up the forum a couple months ago) I saw inverted reflections of the content on the tube face make there way to the screen, this washed out the image noticeably on mixed content scenes. They were maybe a little bit sharper than the GT17 lenses but I was already super sharp corner to corner with the GT17 lenses.

VIM 03P (need description link)
9 out of 10
- I went from a standard 02 VIM to an 03 VIM in both my 8500LC and my 9500Ultra, this was the single biggest upgrade I've seen for the Marquee, wider bandwidth, better colour tracking, better gamma tracking. If you want to see a noticeable improvement in image quality this is the place to put your money.

Red C-element
6 out of 10
- If you can get your hands on one of these today, it's well worth the effort, the improvement in colour balance is quite noticeable, without this the Marquee has very orange reds. Make sure you also have the proper green C-element as well.

Mike Parker Mikron Mods VIM & VNB
1 out of 10
- According to Mike my boards were close but not quite "Mikron" boards. I had an 03 VIM and neck boards that were modded by Mike. I did a number of comparisons between unmodded 02, unmodded 03 and the modded 03 VIMs. The unmodded 02 was the clear looser of the three, but the unmodded 03 and the modded 03 were indistinguishable. Colour tracking, gamma tracking and bandwidth were almost identical on both boards. The neck boards are a little harder to comment on, they were setup to run in my 9500Ultra that had LUGs in it so I couldn't run standard neck boards to do a comparison but I did test the VIM's in the 8500LC, colour and gamma tracking was almost identical in the 8500LC as was bandwidth.
- Mike charges a lot of money for these mods, I think the money would be better spent on an unmodded 03 VIM and a professional calibration.

Colour Filtered HD144/145 lenses on 8500
6 out of 10
- I've added this as it was a very nice upgrade to the 8500, but only if you can get them super cheap and make your own adapters. With the price of projectors where they are today, this mod needs to be cheap to be worth the effort. Likely you will have to move your projector closer to the screen but when done, the image is sharper and the addition of the colour filtering makes a big difference.


Chris.

[Nashou66]

I agree with all except for the Vim upgrade, But i have the latest 02 vim with the peaking circuit, it is just a bit sharper than the 03 vim after you adjust for the res your using since the peaking circuit has to be tuned for that resolution and frequency.

With the franken yokes i still have to do the work on the barkenstien focus coils, but from my preliminary testing they can get sharper than the 1292 Frankenyokes MrkII.

Also Id have to say the HVPS resistor mod for video noise reduction, the sparklies you see in the background are reduced dramatically, I did the caps at a later date after and it did not do as much as the resistors did.

Athanasios

[Elaine Benes]

[garyfritz]

[antorsae]

My list:

Frankenyokes II (1292 Yokes w astig windings) 9 out of 10

This is to me the best upgrade you should do in a Marquee unless you watch it at contrast 40.... Super tight lines and focus. IMHO one of the best things of the G90 (and Cine9) is precise focus control (way over the marquee...)... this mod brings the Marquee closer to that.

HD10F Lenses 5 out of 10 (vs. GT17), 7 out of 10 (my unknown ones)
I got mine from 1292 PJs, compared to GT17 I'd say it's a decent improvement, but to be honest it's not like night and day.

HOWEVER: I bought some 4 unlabeled HD10xx family senses which feel a bit different that the Gt17/hd10 and they are way sharper than the Hd10f... maybe those are newer hd10f from a G90... I don't know what they are but they are better than GT17 and (my) HD10F.

VIM 03P (need description link) 8 out of 10
I've compared it to an unmodded 02P, and a Mikron 03P. The 03P was equally as sharp as the Mikron 02P but the 03P showed significantly less background noise.

DraganM HD maintenance upgrades 8 out of 10
I had my mods installed in my two 9500 Ultras. I got the mods installed by a fellow forum member in my right projector. For some reason my right projector didn't have convergence completely stable... but... now convergence is super-rock solid with the mods, almost on power up. I can easily see scalines at 1080p with a single projector... very nice!!!

Red C-element ?
Never had the non C-element so I cannot comment.

Moome HD Card (1.2 HDMI) w/ gamma 8 out of 10
I perceived this as sharper vs. RGBHV, and gamma correction is a must IMHO in a CRT.

LVPS Fan Mod 7 out of 10
They work but not as much as you'd expect. My expectation was to have a 99% silent projector, and it's not there (yet).

HVPS Resistor mods ?
I need to get an issue fixed with this so I'll report once its fixed. Be careful when you do this to readjust G2 levels as well as order extra resistors, etc.

Regards ! Andres

[draganm]

[antorsae]

I'd love to hear the opinion of those who have installed LUGs into their Marquees (vs. LCPs) as well as HFQ900 (vs. GT17 or 'regular' HD10)... and Moome 1.3 HDMI V2 vs. Moome 1.2 HDMI ... considering that there is almost no deep color sources around.

[mp20748]

[mp20748]

So far listed, who has actually experienced a FULL set of Mikrons?



Better still, let's say I invite a few people over to witness what happens when I simply swap back and forth between an UN-modified 03 VIM and one of my 02 Mikrons?

Who's gain for this?

[Nashou66]

[antorsae]

Interesting. Has anybody measured the gamma response of: no gamma, gamma w/ Moome 1.2 and gamma w/ Moome 1.3?

[Tim in Phoenix]

Guys!


I have delivered over 200 of our E-Tech./Papst fan mods in the last eight years, and only one user said he was not impressed. James Wellnitz, when he was still running Accurate Imaging here in Scottsdale, made our fan mod standard equipment on every Accurate Marquee projector.


.

[draganm]

wow, i get an 8 out of 10, I'm pretty happy with that Too bad this hobby is so small, I'de like to do a couple of other things for the ole MArquee.
AFA the other stuff, I like tim's fan mod's a lot and my older MP modded video chain has never given me problems in the 5 years it's been in my 8500. Of course like everything in this hobby opinion's will differ.

[mp20748]

There's a ton of my mods out there over the past 6 or 7 years that's still going strong. the problems I've had with them were mostly from me pushing the stock boards to a bandwidth they were not designed to handle. It was risky, but in the long run, I made it happen..

Now concerning the Mikrons which are mentioned here in this thread. IN the next couple of weeks I'll have a few people over to see an 02 VIM in comparison to an Un-modified 03 VIM. I know what's what, but I'd prefer to let others comment on what they've observed themselves. I'd like for the rule to judge the two on: colors, sharpness and noise. Those three things, but any other critical analysis can also be mentioned.

On my mods... let me once again say what i've been saying for over a year: I don't sell mods.

The only mods that have been purchased from me were bought either because of a package deal I've made with someone, and I threw in the mods, or I've sold a board or two over the past two years. I've also made it clear that I'll do upgrades, and will only do mods for those who live close by.

Other than that, I've been telling people they are not being sold. My purpose for not selling them has to do with a problem that was popping up on some Marquees but not all. So I've suspended them to look at a few problems.

As far as them being distributed one day, well, that will happen for sure in January. But that depends on the person that's supposed to be selling them.

In me making them available once more, my goal was to make sure they would not have any ongoing problems. At this point that problem has been solved. Concerning the projectors that they may not work in, I've also solved that problem.

When they are announced for sale, it won't be happening from me. And when it does happen, they will be two or more versions of the same thing. Which would either be VIM only or the complete set. I worked hard on the VIM only which should be affordable, and much easier for the person doing them than what i had been doing over the years.

And The VIM only deal will without a doubt prove itself when compared to an 03 VIM.

The full set I'll need to still work out.


The only thing that will need to happen with the VIM only deal, would be that the neck boards would have to be up to par. And for that, I'll suggest that they are sent in with the VIM for evaluation and fixing if needed.



So, to be clear once more. I don't sell mods... I'll be turning them over to someone else in January. And will be doing the same thing with the G90 and NEC mods.

At this point in the CRT game, I would mostly like to contribute to keeping CRT in the game. I've done well over the years selling mods.

I'd hate to go digital, I've yet to see one that looks natural. They also seem to bother me somehow. I think I'm allergic to digitals..

[antorsae]

Hi all - I'd like to step in and clarify than in my (blend) setup there are things like optics and beam control that are more relevant than bandwidth (in blend my pjs are running ~1100 x 800 @ 72 hz which is not that much). Hence some stuff is more important to me.

Re: lvps mod it works exactly as advertised, it may just be me who wanted a 0 db pj

rgs Andres

[draganm]

wow, 15 reply's and it hasnt gotten nasty yet! Is everyone got the flu or what?

[Nashou66]

[stefuel]

Completely gut it, sell all the parts for $75.32 and put all AmPro gut's back in and that's all you need

[Nashou66]