First Recap: Sony STR-6800SD Help

[lilsatyre]

Hi everyone,

Been lurking for a while in the diy section and made scant posts in other places. I'm looking to tackle my first full recap on a sony str-6800sd, hopefully with AK's help. I've done the BillD C-1 mods to my carver preamp, I can solder well enough to get myself into trouble. I've got a meter, a signal gen and an oscope, although I haven't had occasion to try the signal gen / oscope. I've read through leestereo and cohibajoe's recap threads linked below for some basis about what to do.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....grade-of-unican-erics-sony-str-6800sd.550256/
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/sony-str-6800sd-recap.415389/

I just have a couple of questions before I start to make a parts list and start the recap.
1) Outside of the parts listed in Leestereo's thread, are there any diodes etc. I should replace for reliability?
2) When I acquired the receiver, the owner's had it hooked up / on. I checked the dc offset at the time, and it was somewhere around 400mv, I know this is high but in the partial service manual I found online, could not find what it should be. How should I go about troubleshooting this, or should I go through the recap and see where I end up?
3) Outside of the listed threads, are there any reasonable upgrades I want to consider? So far my plan is to order the same (or similar) parts as Leestereo did in his restoration. Should I also recap the FM board? Replace signal path resistors with metal film etc.? I don't have a set budget for the project and would rather only be in here doing an overhaul once. Depending on complexity I would need a fair amount of help to pick / choose parts.
4) Anything else I need to post up information wise for folks?

I'll be posting interior pics of the unit tonight when I get home.

 

[lilsatyre]

Bueller? Trudging on, put together a cap list and will turn it into a mouser or digikey (or both) BOM tomorrow and post it up. Decided not to recap FM as I can't do alignment / want to sort out the other issues first (also still need to pick caps for power supply and look at how to rebuild the dual cap).
Followed Leestereo's restoration thread, any input on what cap type to put in the question mark boxes for the miscellaneous caps not covered in Leestereo's restoration guide would be awesome. Also, two of the 10e2 diodes were adjacent to the bank of resistors that get heat stressed. Should I worry about replacing those?

Here are some pics of the different boards in the meantime.

Preamp Board:

Amp and Amp EQ Board:

And Cap list so far is attached.

 

[lilsatyre]

Should I move this to solid state for some more input? Have some questions about cap types and things that I would like some input on from more experienced members before I put in an order.

 

[Blue Shadow]

Diodes that go bad are discussed here on AK. You need to see if you unit have any of those. Numbers I remember are the VD1221 and other VD diodes with ones and twos in the number. Usually replaced with a pair of 1N4148 in series.

DC Offset should be zero. But you can look at EchoWars sticky about it in solid state to see what the good numbers are and the bad numbers start. 400 is bad.

Changing components for improvement is up to the technician doing the work or following someone that knows what they are doing. That ain't me. I'm not re-engineering the circuit or upgrading every component in sight. Just a few, maybe.

Is your cap list from Leestereo? He has made changes and he knows why. I got no idea. Why so many different styles of cap? Sort of a smorgasbord of caps on that list. Yes, we like 25 or even 35V minimum caps. Seem to be same size when small value and ConradH says they are better. Good enough for me.