CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[htguy1]

hi

So after my move 3 years ago, I still cant find all my notes etc from Chris Stevens and his mods for the Marquee. Does someone have a set they can share? (I figure its time to give up and just ask!)

Thanks

God bless...
Mark

[Tim in Phoenix]

Hello


Just put dozens of costly tantalum capacitors everywhere..........


.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Will that help?

[Nashou66]

Actually in some places they do. But in some there have been advances in film cap technology where those might work better. Before size was the restricting factor.

In his mod plans Mark he did not have some things listed like the HVPS mods he did with wet tants. But 800 bucks worth of wet tants is not cost effective for us today unless you get them cheap somewhere. I was able to get a bunch of wet caps that one member here put them in his CVA and in some areas of his VDM. He likes the results.

Just change out most lytics with new low ESR versions like the Panasonic FC or FM series. Use OsCons across the power rails of most op amps and other chips.

There are lots of stuff you can try, just do some research on parts.

Nashou

[htguy1]

Hi,

Tim, yeah that's sort of his theory, but I recall his plans being a bit more detailed...

Thanks Nashou, I have done some of his mods and really liked the results. The HVPS g2 mod was really a nice improvement, so much so that Hirez used to sell it on the marquee mod line. (http://www.hometheater1.com/modpage.htm ) I found a way to do that one for about $16

ANyhow, if someone does have a copy of his mods I would still like to get one.

Thanks

God bless...
Mark

[Curt Palme]

I'm not trying to slam Chris at all, I met him once, and he seemed like a nice guy, but I haven't heard from him in over 10 years. That's about how old his mods are, and I think that if you search this forum here, you'll find many more detailed steps on Marquee mods that supercede anything he came up with 10 years ago.

[Curt Palme]

I'm not trying to slam Chris at all, I met him once, and he seemed like a nice guy, but I haven't heard from him in over 10 years. That's about how old his mods are, and I think that if you search this forum here, you'll find many more detailed steps on Marquee mods that supercede anything he came up with 10 years ago.

[htguy1]

Hi Curt,

I hear you on that and I have done many many other mods on mine, but I just wanted to look at some of his again. (I used his plans to give me some ideas for my own, cheaper version of Wet tant cap mods)

[Nashou66]

On the decoupling caps for the vim he added 2 1uf COG ceramic caps twisted together. he insisted on Skycaps.

Fo the VDM he used all 560uf 35 volt wet tants. and used those for every power rail on every board.

Athanasios

[Tim in Phoenix]

Guys

I have worked on repairing a number of CS-modded projectors. The tants feel like they are solid steel, very heavy, and they can literally tear the foil pads off of the boards due to weight.

.

[Nashou66]

[htguy1]

Hi

Yeah, tim you are right, got to be very careful how they are installed and its best to never ship them without proper prep before shipping. Btw, do you have any of those caps you took off?


Here is a pic of my HVPS mod based on his design but tweaked by my cost and supply constraints.


http://s1272.photobucket.com/albums/y393/m_mcgranahan/?action=view&current=2012-10-20083024_zpsf4580210.jpg

Its in a nice string of pearls configuration... it survived a 1750 mile move in that config. btw.


THanks

God bless...
Mark

[Nashou66]

Hmm Lets see, Chris used 4 100volt 100uf caps there so you have 7. 400/7=57volts. So what do you have there 60 volt wet's?

I want to try the lead type Clarity cap of 33uf value( higher use screw studs)

http://www.partsconnexion.com/capacitor_film_clarity_tc.html

http://www.partsconnexion.com/prod_pdf/TC_datasheet.pdf

3.5mOhm ESR


Nashou

[htguy1]

[Gannon]

Chris is still around, although I haven't talked with him in months.

A few years back, I wondered if he was with the living...since he'd been given basically a six-month death sentence from his doctors...and it had been over six years since I'd last contacted him. Didn't even know if my contact information would work. I simply thought about him, and then got an e-mail the very next day. It was eerie, another of a long line of mystical co-incidences in my wild life.

We had some dialogue at about the time his website enabling easy access to the CERN research group's collection of sites was being absorbed into the mainstream. The scientists at CERN started using IT instead of their own main pages, since his was easier to navigate!

But then I hit him with a desire to catch up with the imaging madmen at Teranex to help reverse the NASA filtering of Mars Rover imagery...trying to disprove a fellow who claims to be a whistleblower for a secret government program into time viewing and travel. Its a long story, and too much for this early in the day.


Cheers!
John
Detroit

[Nashou66]

I have been in sporadic contact with him for a year or so about the Marquee mods and his extensive use of tants. He is now into the 60k
SIM projector. I forgot the model.

But he is a strange fellow.

He does super high end audio/video installations now for very very wealthy people and then he is also really big into the Occupy Movement. Hypocrisy at its best!!

He linked me to some Mods he was doing on Laser disc players this past year on youtube and there is where he also has a bunch of videos with Himself at Occupy rallies. I guess the medical issues explains why i noticed him missing many teeth in the videos.

Strange but very intelligent at the same time, sometimes the two go hand in hand. Thank God for people like that!

Nashou

[Gannon]

There is ZERO hypocrisy in "taking" from the rich and giving to the poor, especially if the poor happen to be yourself.

Anyone who sees a conflict there doesn't understand the depths of the extreme issues with corporate capitalism gone amok.

I will also spend time in a wealthy individual's home, serving them with my gifts and talents...and then go immediately to some outreach downtown to help others less able than myself with food and shelter. It is the exact opposite to hypocrisy, actually. Both Chris and I are never shy about our intent and desire to improve society. We've had some great conversations over the years.

Until that whole Time Travel stuff, LOL!


He is actually modding LD players...curious. I just got three of 'em, and >350 movies, from a good client. Some stuff that will NEVER be done again on BluRay, heck some didn't make it to DVD.

[Nashou66]

[virusc]

back in the day when I worked for HiRez I spoke with the engineer (steve) about the CS mods. At the time they were taking a new 9500 ultra and modding it with CS mods for the DTS booth teranex demo for that years CEDIA I think it was. Chris shipped the kit to us directly with instructions. We did not notice any difference while watching material and test patterns. I remember it being a lot of caps. At the time we also had the teranex and a D5 deck with raw HDTV at 720p and 1080i on D5 tape (does not get better than this) using HDSDI. I did notice a slight difference in very low light detail noise when directly looking into the CRT faceplate but it was very minor. The engineer had concerns over the mods for reliability and overall changing the overall circuit. Certain caps are their for a reason.

I would be interested in his LD mods though.

I have a LDS2,LDS1,CLD-99, and probably 10 other players.

[mp20748]

[virusc]

thanks Mike. I'm sure it has made you and Tim nearly mad trying to tell customers why certain things are done. I usually do not post on forums anymore as it seems that my input is wasted by trolls and people wanting to hear what they want.
I am not a EE but I am a IT infrastructure engineer so I know about systems design and tech manufacturing from a high level.

I used to be a high end home theater consultant and people would argue with me on some very basic concepts in which they were totally wrong all the time. Many times we installed $100k systems that was just a bunch of gear patched together in a terrible acoustic and visual room.

CRT projectors then and electronic design today is very much a large corporation very expensive R&D players only club. We will not see again small firms that come out with multichannel preamps and TV sets that are designed in house and exclusive. Old audiophiles and people with that mentality do not and will not except this I guess. Computer modeling and proper circuit design is very specialized and difficult. Most people have no idea of what is required to produce new modern electronics at all. It is not a tube radio or preamp like we all wish and remember. I think the faults of CS is just that and the fact he did not attempt to reverse engineer anything thus did not see what it was effecting either positive or negative it would have.

Aside from my rant. Steve at hires verified what we observed before and after using high bandwidth waveform analyzers and oscilloscopes and he showed me the difference. My knowledge is not deep enough to understand what he found but he showed me different points in the signal path and the caps changed the waveform negatively for the most part. The same was true and worse for the power supply and deflection circuits. He was a very good engineer and could just go with the scope and look at the signal to find faults with no schematic.

from what I know a small amount of clients purchased these systems. Some were double stack BTW. Cost was well over $150 for the single projector setup with teranex. To make it more insane this was before any commercially available HD prerecorded content was available other than Dtheater which was crappy mpeg2 tape and the rare MuseHD. More of a status thing than anything else in my opinion where most of the special custom modified gear ends up anyway. I remember a few years later removing some of the systems and most had very low hours (a few hundred in most cases and half of that was used for calibration).

Also for the record I saw them reset the hour meter which I believe no one other than electrohome knows how to do to this day. He would not show me how to do it but I did see it being done.