Replacing the VU meter lamps on my Yamaha CA-2000

The previous owner replaced the broken lamp with blue LED (with resistors to reduce the voltage). That works but is quite ugly to me. I bought some 12V lamp from amazon (halogen?) (intended for car dashboard) (uxcell Instrument Light 12V T3 計器灯 12V T3 イエロー自動車車内ダッシュボード). Nice stuffs. Works out great (need to remove the resistor installed by the previous owner). Note: without the lamps installed (or with only one or two lamps), the voltage seems too high (15V without lamps and extra resistors if memory served), but with all lamp installed, voltage drops to only about 10.5V. Seems pretty safe and it is bright enough.

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Aiwa XK-009 overhaul

I won the yahoo auction for the legendary Aiwa XK-009 at about 45000 yen. It is considered to be the very best aiwa cassette deck from aiwa. Although it was working, as expected, there were some issues. The biggest problem was that it suffered from unusually high w&f, which was very audible. The previous owner installed the belt in a wrong way - the belt was wrapped around a screw. The belt was left with some rails-like groves. This deck is very sensitive to the belt. So I ordered a new set of belts from fixyouraudio. It was not the best belt for this machine (the best ones are from a website called something communication). I always ordered belts from fixyouraudio. I always had good results from them and expected no difference this time. The aiwa xk-009 was quite a pain to take apart. I took apart most of it except for the fast-forward/backward mechanism, which does not affect the performance. I removed the old oil and applied new oil (crc lubricant). The all belts were repla...

A Quarantine Hotel in Xiamen, China

This is the quarantine hotel room I am in. Not bad. The bathroom is huge since it is a spa hotel. The bathtub can hold two people. I will stay here for two weeks plus an extra "self-quarantine" week (I originally planned to stay at someone's apartment for that, but the community worker told me that the apartment did not qualify for self-quarantine. The good news is that the government will pay for the extra week). The food is not bad. The breakfast is free and the lunch/dinner costs 50 RMB ($7.85) per meal. I can order takeout/mail but they only come in during dinner time. The room costs 385 RMB (~$60) a day. Pretty standard from what I've heard. Body temperature is measured twice a day. At the beginning few days, the nurse came by for the measurement, but at some point, she gave me a thermometer and asked me to do it myself and send the results to her by WeChat. Every few days, the nurse comes by for covid tests, and boy, it is not fun. One nurse is gentler than th...

Replacing the Capacitors in my DDII

It is time to recap my Sony wm-DDII. The device is more than 30 years old and the electrolytic capacitors need to be replaced. I got some nichicon fine gold audio grade capacitors. They are much bigger than the original. It was tough but I managed to fit in four nichicon. I can not do AB comparison but I think there is a significant improvement in terms of sound. The bass goes deeper and feels more powerful. The high is also improved. It sounds more detailed and dynamic than before. I am thinking if I should replace the remaining three capacitors later. Update: The rest of the capacitors were replaced with some ELNA "audio" capacitors from ebay (they are relatively cheap). ELNA "audio" capacitors

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