Hey MOD freaks & Boombox Fanatics!!!
I bought a SONY CFS-88S, my 2nd, from Lopez, AKA Miguel1Love of Ebay for 100 bucks plus shipping. He tried to get the deck working but it has a few issues but the Line In & Radio work fine. I used a Jeweller's screw driver & fine tuned the variable capacitor for the FM & now it gets more stations in & is a bit clearer than when I got it. As always, Lopez packed it quite well & the shipping time was about average being I live in Canada.
As most members here may know the 88S looks amazing with brushed aluminum face, smooth elegent controls & a sweet tuner window featuring GIANT VU meters that I love. I was always a VU junkie & will choose a box with VU's over LED meters anyday, unless it's a C-100 which have both...
Anyways, my first phase of MODs will be all about improving the sound first. As some who own this radio know, the speaker cabs are quite shallow & lack a lot of warmth in the mid-bass/bass area & the tweeters are quite harsh in the mid-range section leaving much to be desired, as far as sound is concerned.
Enter Parts Express & their amazing selection of raw drivers. First, I wrangled me some GRS 8" woofers, which perform quite well in a small 0,8 cu-ft. enclosure & still goes dwon to about 40Hz & shoe horned them into the tight little cabinets to see how they would sound.
Take a look:
As you can see here, I had to drill a hole to vent the back pole piece of the woofer's magnet & they just barely fit into the cabinet. The results look quite clean & the holes match up perfectly.
I used deadmat sound treatment for the cabinet & left the rear vent slits open since the woofer was in a very small 0.23cu ft cabinet. The bass won't be super deep but midbass/bass should be much warmer than the stiff SONY woofers that were stock.
Now, I still have the original tweeters installed for the sound tests below & for a first run, I am quite happy. The only complaint I have now, is the tweeters @ 4 OHMS is quite bright & too strong in the upper midrange despite the high crossover point @ 18000Hz(2.2uf - 6db/oct.) which does not mate well with the woofers which have a lower efficiency in the low-mid to mid range....
Still way better than stock sound already so I'm excited to work on it some more...
Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICLZ2rd0e-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma9Ftu5z-J0
Next job is to replace the tweeters with some modern domes & tweak the crossover points with some good Polyester film caps which, to my ears, sound much better & more detailed than cheap electrolytics....
Cheers,
Cpl
I bought a SONY CFS-88S, my 2nd, from Lopez, AKA Miguel1Love of Ebay for 100 bucks plus shipping. He tried to get the deck working but it has a few issues but the Line In & Radio work fine. I used a Jeweller's screw driver & fine tuned the variable capacitor for the FM & now it gets more stations in & is a bit clearer than when I got it. As always, Lopez packed it quite well & the shipping time was about average being I live in Canada.
As most members here may know the 88S looks amazing with brushed aluminum face, smooth elegent controls & a sweet tuner window featuring GIANT VU meters that I love. I was always a VU junkie & will choose a box with VU's over LED meters anyday, unless it's a C-100 which have both...
Anyways, my first phase of MODs will be all about improving the sound first. As some who own this radio know, the speaker cabs are quite shallow & lack a lot of warmth in the mid-bass/bass area & the tweeters are quite harsh in the mid-range section leaving much to be desired, as far as sound is concerned.
Enter Parts Express & their amazing selection of raw drivers. First, I wrangled me some GRS 8" woofers, which perform quite well in a small 0,8 cu-ft. enclosure & still goes dwon to about 40Hz & shoe horned them into the tight little cabinets to see how they would sound.
Take a look:
As you can see here, I had to drill a hole to vent the back pole piece of the woofer's magnet & they just barely fit into the cabinet. The results look quite clean & the holes match up perfectly.
I used deadmat sound treatment for the cabinet & left the rear vent slits open since the woofer was in a very small 0.23cu ft cabinet. The bass won't be super deep but midbass/bass should be much warmer than the stiff SONY woofers that were stock.
Now, I still have the original tweeters installed for the sound tests below & for a first run, I am quite happy. The only complaint I have now, is the tweeters @ 4 OHMS is quite bright & too strong in the upper midrange despite the high crossover point @ 18000Hz(2.2uf - 6db/oct.) which does not mate well with the woofers which have a lower efficiency in the low-mid to mid range....
Still way better than stock sound already so I'm excited to work on it some more...
Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICLZ2rd0e-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma9Ftu5z-J0
Next job is to replace the tweeters with some modern domes & tweak the crossover points with some good Polyester film caps which, to my ears, sound much better & more detailed than cheap electrolytics....
Cheers,
Cpl
Unleash the horror Cpl! :freddy: THE DISCO Kamacuras! :frankenstein: 
