Roksan Xerxes restoration
This one was a new one on me. I've been aware that the Xerxes exists, but never come across one before. In terms of belt drive decks I've heard the usual suspects, the Linn lp12, the Thorens TD150/160, the Systemdeks, Regas, et cetera et cetera, but not the Xerxes. Nobody I know has or has had one, and I've never seen or heard one in a dem room. Perhaps because the only dealers within striking distance of me when I was actually buying stuff and things from hifi dealers were Linn dealers. And the fact that I haven't been in a dem room in 25 years..........
Anyway....
Recently, a customer of mine came to me with a knackered Xerxes that had the classic sagged top plate and the classic busted power supply. He wanted a type 2 Lenco building and the Xerxes repairing. The cost to fault find the original notoriously unreliable XPS1 power supply and make a new top plate from baltic birch ply which seems to be the current thing to do was deemed too expensive.
It seemed a shame for the old thing to get skipped, so I bought it as it was in need of all the work, and built an alternative deck for him to take the place of the Roksan.
Anyway....
Recently, a customer of mine came to me with a knackered Xerxes that had the classic sagged top plate and the classic busted power supply. He wanted a type 2 Lenco building and the Xerxes repairing. The cost to fault find the original notoriously unreliable XPS1 power supply and make a new top plate from baltic birch ply which seems to be the current thing to do was deemed too expensive.
It seemed a shame for the old thing to get skipped, so I bought it as it was in need of all the work, and built an alternative deck for him to take the place of the Roksan.
This is it after a bit of a clean, it came with an Ortofon MC1 turbo high output moving coil cartridge and a Rega RB300 arm. This is how he bought it back in the late eighties.
In order to test the broken PSU, the first thing to do was to remove the sag from the plinth top plate as it was so bad that the platter edge was in contact with the top plate. Can't spin a platter if a platter can't spin....
After some thinking, the method I came up with was to dismantle the deck, then clamp the top plate to a large granite chopping board. My wife has an 18 inch by 12 inch one in the kitchen which was hijacked for the afternoon. The reason for this is that the chopping board is surface ground on the top face so it is very flat. And it won't bend under pressure from the sagged bit either. Because its granite. Clamping the top plate down onto it means that the sagging cutout is forced into line with the non sagging part. I then drilled into the vertical side face of the top plate in two places with a 5.8mm drill bit, one near the bearing end and one near the arm end of the cutout as the sag was uneven across the rear face. I drilled straight through the main part of the top plate and into the sagged part, which is clamped flat, so is in the correct alignment with the rest of the top plate. Then inserted (read bashed in with a hammer.... no subtlety required at this point) 2 6mm steel rods. Once the clamps were removed, no sag. Cutout bridged. Ehrmagerd yerv completely ruined it! Some people might say. It was either this or the entire deck was bricked. Will it sound any different to a non bridged to plate? who knows. It works now and it didn't before and that was the point.
In order to test the broken PSU, the first thing to do was to remove the sag from the plinth top plate as it was so bad that the platter edge was in contact with the top plate. Can't spin a platter if a platter can't spin....
After some thinking, the method I came up with was to dismantle the deck, then clamp the top plate to a large granite chopping board. My wife has an 18 inch by 12 inch one in the kitchen which was hijacked for the afternoon. The reason for this is that the chopping board is surface ground on the top face so it is very flat. And it won't bend under pressure from the sagged bit either. Because its granite. Clamping the top plate down onto it means that the sagging cutout is forced into line with the non sagging part. I then drilled into the vertical side face of the top plate in two places with a 5.8mm drill bit, one near the bearing end and one near the arm end of the cutout as the sag was uneven across the rear face. I drilled straight through the main part of the top plate and into the sagged part, which is clamped flat, so is in the correct alignment with the rest of the top plate. Then inserted (read bashed in with a hammer.... no subtlety required at this point) 2 6mm steel rods. Once the clamps were removed, no sag. Cutout bridged. Ehrmagerd yerv completely ruined it! Some people might say. It was either this or the entire deck was bricked. Will it sound any different to a non bridged to plate? who knows. It works now and it didn't before and that was the point.
Once the deck was put back together, the PSU could be tested.
The XPS1 is an anomaly. The deck itself seems to have had a load of good ideas and research done on it, the PSU on the other hand seems to have been a rush job. Quite why you would put a very hot running class A circuit in a practically sealed metal box, and then insulate said box with a nice MDF winter coat is beyond me. A recipe for problems. Which it has. In spades.
I brought it up on a borrowed variac to try to avoid it instantly expiring but to no avail. It ran for about 5 minutes then did the classic little twitch of the motor, signifying that one PSU phase has packed up. The circuit itself is fine, quite a nice job done there, its the complete lack of adequate heatsinking of the output devices, and the pair of very very hot coffin resistors in a box that the heat can't get out of that causes the failures.
So. We now have a bricked psu, and a spinnable platter. Next thing was to start to fault find the psu. The first place to look is the caps as the heat in there would kill caps pretty fast. It had. The two big caps were replaced along with the other smaller ones that I had in the spares box. Not all were replaced as I didn't have all the values needed.
This done, It worked. And got very hot.
More work required. So I cut a dirty great big hole in the top of the psu case on the milling machine, fitted some mesh into said hole, and repainted the black ash top to make it look right
The XPS1 is an anomaly. The deck itself seems to have had a load of good ideas and research done on it, the PSU on the other hand seems to have been a rush job. Quite why you would put a very hot running class A circuit in a practically sealed metal box, and then insulate said box with a nice MDF winter coat is beyond me. A recipe for problems. Which it has. In spades.
I brought it up on a borrowed variac to try to avoid it instantly expiring but to no avail. It ran for about 5 minutes then did the classic little twitch of the motor, signifying that one PSU phase has packed up. The circuit itself is fine, quite a nice job done there, its the complete lack of adequate heatsinking of the output devices, and the pair of very very hot coffin resistors in a box that the heat can't get out of that causes the failures.
So. We now have a bricked psu, and a spinnable platter. Next thing was to start to fault find the psu. The first place to look is the caps as the heat in there would kill caps pretty fast. It had. The two big caps were replaced along with the other smaller ones that I had in the spares box. Not all were replaced as I didn't have all the values needed.
This done, It worked. And got very hot.
More work required. So I cut a dirty great big hole in the top of the psu case on the milling machine, fitted some mesh into said hole, and repainted the black ash top to make it look right
So we now have a running Xerxes that isn't sagging. Much fighting with the motor alignment ensued to stop the belt falling off. It had been adjusted to compensate for the sagging top plate so I had to start from scratch with it. Tres fiddly. As with most things on this deck.
I listened to it. And had the thought that if I had gone into a dealers in the eighties and listened to this combo, I'd have bought something else. It sounded crap.
So, I went to town with the alignment tools and found that the none VTA adjustable rb300 was a good 4mm too low at the pivot. This was how the thing was bought from the dealer, how they had set it up. I turned a shim to get the cart VTA right. It was still crap.
At this point I put it away for a bit as I had other things I should have been doing.
In the interim I thought about why it was crap, and came to the conclusion that the arm and cart were why. I don't get on with Ortofon carts other than the SL15, the original mc10, the SPU and the Kontrapunkt b, and I don't get on with Rega RB series arms either.
While perusing a site which we all know and love to hate which shall not be named, for something quite different as it happens, I came across a Roksan Tabriz that was not on much money and ending very very soon. had about a couple of minutes left on it. I read the description which said it has some small cosmetic marks on it where it went into the arm clip, and made a split second decision to stick a very cheeky bid in on it with 8 seconds to go and won it. For very little.
So the Tabriz duly arrived, and I was damned if I could see the so called cosmetic blemishes. So on it went. The MC1 cart was replaced with a Dynavector DV20x2 which was sat doing nothing.
Then It came alive.
I listened to it. And had the thought that if I had gone into a dealers in the eighties and listened to this combo, I'd have bought something else. It sounded crap.
So, I went to town with the alignment tools and found that the none VTA adjustable rb300 was a good 4mm too low at the pivot. This was how the thing was bought from the dealer, how they had set it up. I turned a shim to get the cart VTA right. It was still crap.
At this point I put it away for a bit as I had other things I should have been doing.
In the interim I thought about why it was crap, and came to the conclusion that the arm and cart were why. I don't get on with Ortofon carts other than the SL15, the original mc10, the SPU and the Kontrapunkt b, and I don't get on with Rega RB series arms either.
While perusing a site which we all know and love to hate which shall not be named, for something quite different as it happens, I came across a Roksan Tabriz that was not on much money and ending very very soon. had about a couple of minutes left on it. I read the description which said it has some small cosmetic marks on it where it went into the arm clip, and made a split second decision to stick a very cheeky bid in on it with 8 seconds to go and won it. For very little.
So the Tabriz duly arrived, and I was damned if I could see the so called cosmetic blemishes. So on it went. The MC1 cart was replaced with a Dynavector DV20x2 which was sat doing nothing.
Then It came alive.
I had a Tabriz fingerlift in my box of bits and pieces so I used that as the arm didn't have one. I set it all up using my Dr Feickert alignment jig, the sat back and listened.
Its a different presentation to my other decks, of which there are many, but it has something about it. Very open sounding with rather good front to back stage depth, and a nice wide soundstage. It has an uncanny way with cymbals which is rather beguiling. It has what some people might say is a clinical sound to it and not like, but I like that sort of sound. I like to have a very clean and accurate sound, I don't really like the false euphonic sound that some so called highend decks have, that fake foot tappiness. Put it this way. I like direct drives, and this is closer in sound to a direct drive than it is to a bouncy suspended subchassis deck sound. I can understand why some people like these and some don't. It is less congested and woolly than some of its contemporaries, but that's just my opinion.
I am not the biggest belt drive fan, but I like this one. And the Yamaha PF800. That I should not have sold.........
I have since gotten hold of a 110v (because it was a lot less money than a normal UK one) Roksan xps 7 and a 110v transformer to replace the original PSU which is still a bit unreliable and requires swearing at every now and again.
I am glad I put the time in and restored this deck to working order, it's nice to be able to have the choice of a couple of very good decks
Onwards!
Its a different presentation to my other decks, of which there are many, but it has something about it. Very open sounding with rather good front to back stage depth, and a nice wide soundstage. It has an uncanny way with cymbals which is rather beguiling. It has what some people might say is a clinical sound to it and not like, but I like that sort of sound. I like to have a very clean and accurate sound, I don't really like the false euphonic sound that some so called highend decks have, that fake foot tappiness. Put it this way. I like direct drives, and this is closer in sound to a direct drive than it is to a bouncy suspended subchassis deck sound. I can understand why some people like these and some don't. It is less congested and woolly than some of its contemporaries, but that's just my opinion.
I am not the biggest belt drive fan, but I like this one. And the Yamaha PF800. That I should not have sold.........
I have since gotten hold of a 110v (because it was a lot less money than a normal UK one) Roksan xps 7 and a 110v transformer to replace the original PSU which is still a bit unreliable and requires swearing at every now and again.
I am glad I put the time in and restored this deck to working order, it's nice to be able to have the choice of a couple of very good decks
Onwards!