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Harman Kardon 330C restoration

Sir.Byrd

Sir.Byrd

Lunatic Member
Recapped this guy recently, also gave it a scrub down and new lights.
Cleaned the controls too, and the knobs are currently in an ultrasonic cleaner.
I haven't adjusted the bias and DC offset yet, but that will come.
Sound is very sweet with some KEF 303.3s.
I tried to use some of the spare Silmic II and Cerafine caps I had laying around,
everything else is Nichicon and the film caps are Panasonic ECQ.

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330c

Good job! I love the 330c! Love that retro look. My daughter is using one with some old Paradigm Titans. Great sound similar to Marantz 2230 and these days it's nice to have a phono built in. One of these days I need to re-cap it but then we'd have to stop listening to it.
 
Wonderful job! You just may have succeeded in getting me off dead center with my 330A.

But then there's the SX-737 and SX-750 I just picked up today. So little time, so much to do! :)

John
 
KEF 103.3's. Those are the only pair other than mine that I have eve seen. Nice little speaker.
 
That is a very nice unit and lovely restoration. This particular model has had my interest for a long time but there is one fatal flaw: green lights! I cannot handle that retro look. Is there a way to somehow dye the plastic so that it becomes blue or something other than green? Anything - even brown lights - would be better! :D
 
Coconuts 500 said:
That is a very nice unit and lovely restoration. This particular model has had my interest for a long time but there is one fatal flaw: green lights! I cannot handle that retro look. Is there a way to somehow dye the plastic so that it becomes blue or something other than green? Anything - even brown lights - would be better! :D
Click to expand...

Try dieing the lamps instead, it may be easier. (Felt pen?) It seems to me there used to be a product for doing this, but cannot remember what it was called.
 
I am not sure how well that would work, the plastic is pretty well green. You could try blue LEDs to get light blue, red LEDS to get yellow, or purple LEDs to get white.
 
Sir.Byrd said:
Recapped this guy recently, also gave it a scrub down and new lights.
Click to expand...

Speaking of lights, did you replace the one for the signal meter? On my 330A it appears (without removing it) to be something between a fuse bulb and a festoon bulb but not exactly either. I've never seen one of those before. Any suggestions for a source?

John
 
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On mine it was exactly the same as the rest of the illumination, five 8V 300mA for the dial, and a single 8V 300mA for the meter. I replaced all of them with 250mA lamps.
 
Sir.Byrd said:
Recapped this guy recently, also gave it a scrub down and new lights.
Click to expand...

I'm just going into my 330A to replace the dial illumination and I found something very surprising.

There's provision for 4 fuse type lamps across the tuning scale. However, there were no fuse lamps in them. Instead, there were wheat grain bulbs with the leads soldered to the clips for the fuse lamps and the bulb itself wedged into one of the clips. Actually, there were only 2 bulbs in place, one burned out, but there were solder marks on all 4 clips, so at one point there must have been 4 installed.

This is decidedly weird. My initial reaction is that someone must have modified this at some point but then it occurred to me that a total of 4 fuse lamps in this rather small dial might be kinda overkill.

Can someone tell me which type of bulb is original? I want to get some bulbs for this from DGWOJO and want to be sure to get the right ones.

Thanks,
John
 

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Sir.Byrd said:
On mine it was exactly the same as the rest of the illumination, five 8V 300mA for the dial, and a single 8V 300mA for the meter. I replaced all of them with 250mA lamps.
Click to expand...

OOPS! I missed this!

Thanks, Sir.Byrd! Someone obviously went through this thing replacing bulbs with what came easily to hand and/or what he could get at Pep Boys.

I think dropping them down to 250mA is a good idea. That's a lotta bulbs for a little dial.

John
 
I like what I see

I want one !!! Can I be a friend of your family Sir.Byrd ?! :D
Seriously though, I would love to listen to that pretty little unit.
 
boreas said:
OOPS! I missed this!

Thanks, Sir.Byrd! Someone obviously went through this thing replacing bulbs with what came easily to hand and/or what he could get at Pep Boys.

I think dropping them down to 250mA is a good idea. That's a lotta bulbs for a little dial.

John
Click to expand...

You would think that it would be a lot of lamps, but any less and there would not be even illumination.

cfinchrist said:
I want one !!! Can I be a friend of your family Sir.Byrd ?! :D
Seriously though, I would love to listen to that pretty little unit.
Click to expand...

If you come across one of these, let me know, I can do the same thing. It is rather fun!
 
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