C.E.C. TL-1X CD Transport -rebuilt and improved by Leviathan

Just had this unit fully reviewed and finely-tuned by Danny Digital.

Bought from another SNAer not long ago (using his photos and some words - hope that's OK) and have recently bought CEC's top-of-the-range transport.  So this is up for sale. 

Price has been substantially reduced.

In stock form, the TL-1X was considered to be one of the very the best transports ever made, but this one is even better, as it has been rebuilt as described below, and has a custom-built true hydrodynamic bearing (see below for details).  It has been completely refreshed and upgraded by Leviathan Audio (details below).

The C.E.C. had a brand-new laser installed. It also has the 'lampizator' S/PDIF output mod. 

Mark of Leviathan Audio has refreshed and upgraded quite a few C.E.C. transports and this one was in best condition he had ever seen, and also that, after the rebuild, it sounded better than the others he had done. 

The rebuild/refresh includes the following:

1 – The Bearing. This is the heart of the mods, and took some time to work out.  I press out the original “Oilite style sintered bronze bushes, and machine up a light press engineering plastic bush that runs full length of the spindle, instead of yoke style as per original. It’s then reamed and hand scraped to perfect fit. This bit is quite tricky.  The brass housing then has a machined ‘O’ ring sealed sump spigot soldered onto it allowing the new sump to be oil filled. A new Eng Plastic thrust disc is machined up and then the housing is sealed and oil filled.

This produces a true hydrodynamic bearing which will run with virtually no clearance and no vibration. This ultra smooth rotation allows the laser to read the disc with no vibration and gives a cleaner/more accurate digital steam, rendering the error correction circuitry almost null and void.

2 – Modified the chassis to allow the new bearing housing shape to fit into the transport plate.

3 - Stripped out all original electrolytics. Replace all the electro’s with high-quality Nichicons.

4 - The Power Supply Board got particular attention here and with great quality Elna Cerafine 11s.  For better tolerance and reliability. The Elnas are quite a bit bigger requiring relocation and subsequent wiring to the board as you can see in the Photos. Also replaced all the bridge rectifiers with high-spec Motorola Ultra Fast/Soft Recovery diodes. This helps supply a cleaner waveform.

5 – Tracking Belt and Spindle Belts replaced as a pair.   Only genuine CEC belts used.

6 – WBT RCAs installed on SPDIF out.

7 - Silver plated solid core copper wire from the Servo Board to the RCA.

8 - New laser diode