I Rebuilt the HiFi Holy Grail Pioneer SX-1980

I am going to custom build the best vintage Hi-Fi system that you have ever seen this is going to include the Hi-Fi holy Grill Pioneer sx1 1980 the Pioneer HPM 100 speakers which may have been the most popular speakers of the 1970s I'm going to custom build a turntable and do modifications like you have never seen before but first let me introduce you to who it's for what is up drama alert Nation I'm your h most killer keemstar let's get into the news this is keemstar a content creator with millions of subscribers this is his Hi-Fi system and today I'm challenged to build it into this oh my freaking God like what you what hey this is uh keemstar I've been watching your guys videos forever I have a Pioneer SX 1980 everything seems to be working fine but like the volume's a little wrong I want to get the capacitors changed I bought all the parts but then like when it comes to me actually doing it I'm like I need a professional anyhow if I can get a call [Music] [Music] back just pulling in like you could see I was starting to get ideas for the system because you could see on everything he had he had his logo I was like okay how we're going to have to incorporate this in somehow I I I truly didn't know what to expect but I had a good feeling about [Music] it so here it is the pride and joy the SX 1980 got this thing from watching your videos of course you know learning about the the stereo Wars of the 1970s and early 80s and had to have it it sounds good but I want it mint and like I need the professionals I need the pros to like come and take care of it so what do you want done to it what are you expecting there's so much that needs to be done to it that I don't know but I know you know the lights like I would like LEDs just cuz they're brighter they're more reliable so we can throw LEDs in the front we choose whatever color you want I usually recommend doing like a cool white in the front it'll really light it up so if you notice the 1980 series or the 80 series on like the 50 Series all the etches in the tuning have like a little bit of glisten on them you hit the light so when you put cool white in this that accenti Ates that and then all of your indicators up here change colors you got blue red green whatever color you know whatever color they are when you do a cool white LED in that it accentuates that color as well so it's going to bring that out even more so everything in this display will change and just be brighter shinier I mean that's what it's you know half the battle right there it's just making it look really nice banana plugs on the back like I hate the the pull and plug thing like I I need a I need banana plugs we'll look at those see what we can do there we're going to replace the caps on the inside you got some of the parts already which is great I got Really Brave one day and decided that I was going to like take this apart and like fix it all up myself bought all the parts and then realize wait I'm not an expert in this like so yeah you you didn't underestimate yourself it's a job that takes like professional people that work on it all the time literal days and weeks to do if they're working on this straight I mean it's big you got to get everything on assembled and everything so we'll do that we'll replace a lot of the caps in there and get it sounding you know like new the heat sinks on the side that show where which is normal over time the top looks in good condition you know you got a little scratch on the front we'll see if we can get out of that and get it all cleaned up just so it it sounds amazing so when people come in to the your living room they're be like what the is that right like wow I know like a lot of people like want it to be like original and that's not the type of person I am I like Resto mod type that's make it like the best it possibly can be think some ideas I got some ideas what we can do we'll go on the back we'll shine up all the inputs and uh you know get the back in good shape even though not everybody always sees that we'll make that just look and sound great [Music] so everything he was asking for was pretty doable he had the face plate which has some scrapes and stuff and that probably couldn't be done I mean there's not much you can do about that but as far as like the other stuff you was asking for totally stuff in our wheelhouse that we can take care of and we could even go even farther with it so I was pretty confident in what he wanted but my brain was already like how can I make it like wow so another thing that I'm looking for is I'm not that knowledgeable in cassettes but I love cassettes like that's my favorite like when I'm listening to a CD when I'm listening to a streamer when I'm listening to any other record vinyl anything doesn't sound as good as cassettes am I crazy but I what does that mean means you like cassettes I like cassettes I like the sound of it the music sounds better it sounds more authentic it does it sounds like real where everything else sounds like digital or you know off analog and digital to two separate two separate sounds and the coolest part about this is I was upstairs looking at this and I actually loaded it with a cassette because I'm looking at the cassette deck and I'm like what is that so of course you had the Rick Roll queued up in the cassette ready to play for me and I'm like uhuh I knew this is coming he was going to Rick Roll us that literally was the plan dude and I already rewound the tape to hit the song too so it's there now what about vinyl you going do any vinyl you want a turntable mixed in there I do want a turn table for that I want something that matches like some type of wood grain um maybe silvery something that's going to look really nice next to the 198 cool I got you okay he did have a turntable and I kind of I kind of roasted his turntable over text a little bit cuz he sends me this picture you got a 1980 you got these big speakers and you got got all this highend gear and he had like a audio Technic at lp60 the lp60 is like the gateway to vinyl it's your first turntable everybody owns one it's great for your first turntable when you have no other gear or you're doing headphones or you're doing a little player speakers but if you have all the gear that he has you're not using that you're going to have a better turntable so I was like okay we are going to match the 1980 to another turntable the problem is I don't have one and I had to find it but before we get into all that we got to go out to the cabin want me to go like slow or do you guys want me to like Whip It Whatever you normally do you don't want to do what I [Music] nor [Music] [Music] so when we got there and we rolled up and it wasn't planned for us to do his system in the cabin but when I got in there I'm like dude it needs some work so we got to get this just not even just from a cosmetic standpoint but it's dirty if not you'll be out here listening to music and it's going to cut out on you and you're not going to have anything Listen to I know I actually got this from watching your videos you covered it and you said it was such an amazing stereo I got it I love the thing but I always thought it sounded bad just cuz it's old but it no it sounds bad CU it's it needs work so we'll get that going there's a there's a lot in here to clean it's it's pretty rough if I turn it on okay that's not really kind of not really what happened when we got in there I started playing with the system he had in there that he said he bought cuz he saw it in a video we did and it stopped working while I was messing with it so I'm sitting there and I'm like messing with the knobs and the sound went out I'm like oh man I did something it's broke now sorry bro I broke your receiver without you knowing it but I'm pretty sure we can fixed it all right keep her safe all right a tight fit here we go what do you looking to have done here here's where I want the SX uh 1980 sitting I want people to come in look at this old classic stereo and say what the is this right have a rack here have you know speakers that match the time period and whatnot and just show it off and I think like it's a perfect spot when people come in the front door it's going to be the first thing they see so it needs to be really really prevalent and really stand out and I think that's going to do the job we'll look at a couple things we can do to really make it pop yeah I'm going to do a custom Rack or all this will just be gone right we'll start from scratch yeah I that's my dream that's my dream so I'm into laser dick laser dang man I'm curious to who my new uh sponsors are going to be on this video laser discs and I was looking for different models I don't know that much about them but when I seen this um this model right here Pioneer Elite and the wood panels on the side I'm like I needed this one so I bought it online it gets here the CD player works the DVD player works the laser disc does not all right so we get the laser disc working this is highend I mean Pioneers is the laser dish you want right so from their Elite brand and it's their Elite brand so this is like one of the number one laser dis the dvl 91 and it's amazing so we got to get it working hopefully we can but cuz laser discs are awesome oh they're so cool it's not VHS it's not anything else it just feels like childhood or [Music] something now we got to try to get this big boy out of here I think you got a little mud on the camera Mikey there we go probably just smear the lens it's okay the door Mikey the door I'm excited I'm so excited how long you need a couple months you said it was going to take two weeks so I found this dude on Instagram who did woodwork makes Moran's cabinets and my personal woodworker doesn't do stuff for my customers he's more like ones and one offs two offs whatever and he does stuff for me and I needed somebody to do these in bulk cuz I just bought this giant morance collection down in Texas and I like I need a lot of morance cabinets one day on Instagram I just stumbled upon some real him doing whatever building a Mor's cabin like oh dude we should reach out to this guy so I did and he just happened to be on the way back from where Keem was at I didn't really know what to expect cuz I never met [Music] him what's up John yo what's going on to see you I have a project for you okay so let me take you through a couple things I know your expertise you get this done and make it look really nice for one of my friends I'm excited man let's get started all right this is the 1980 this is the one that I'll tell you a couple ideas I have for that once we get inside this was out in like his new cabin and when I went out there to check it it was like really dirty and stuff so I figured we're going to work on getting that all cleaned up but I figured why not do something with the top uh as well maybe like a gloss would something match the the furniture in his cabin hey boy that's the Grail right there have you seen it in person no no it's there what is that about 80 lb yeah wow there it is I got to try to figure out how to polish the aluminum on top he got some scratches up there but I don't know how to do that so I may test it on one of mine first and see if I can get something that'll scrub it I'll bring this one in and we get started measuring so we only had a couple hours at the wood shop so I wanted to show them the grills because I had an idea to custom build these that would just blow his mind so we had to go over all those plans next we had the techniques from keem's cabin and on this one we're just going to redo the wood cabinet and do a little bit of customization on it as well so I ended up leaving this here at the wood shop so that could be taken care of next I had to address the turntable which I didn't even have at the time now luckily when we were talking about how I wanted a custom plint built he said hey I got a bunch of junkers sitting around the shop if you can dig through and find two that you can put together to Frankenstein in a one turntable you can have them and we can get it taken care of so we discussed how I wanted the plint built and now it's on to the speakers but now it's time to get back to the shop cuz we have a lot of work to do next we had to build the speakers now to do this I had to take a pair of HPM 100s that have been sitting around for about 40 years take all the drivers out of it to get the cabinet completely empty remove the crossover so that I could replace Parts in that and then give the cabinet to our wood maker to build a custom finish now while the cabinets are at the woodworker I'm going to go back and I'm going to get the drivers cleaned up and maybe even replace some with new ones so we pulled the top off the sx1 1980 and it looks like a lot of them do from the late '70s sitting around dirty filthy Dusty just a total mess so we're going to have to clean it all up inside and out then we're going to replace all the LEDs to give it a nice fresh look with some cool white bulbs the next problem we're going to run into is when we replace the capacitors in this they typically are blue and that just doesn't fit fit the mold of the receiver I want to give them so I have to find a custom wrap to put around the capacitors to make them in his brand colors now on the outside of the cabinet the heat sinks were worn fairly well so we got to get those pulled off repainted and refixed back on next we're going to have to do resoldering along the bottom of the receiver because we're also going to have to replace this power supply so that it doesn't just constantly overheat you can see has custom feet on the bottom of the receiver I think I might actually leave these I kind of liked them we ordered and are fitting in the custom board for the power supply so that it no longer overheats then we're going to replace the speaker terminals on the back of the receiver with 5way binding post and clean up all the oxidation off the inputs and outputs throughout the back of the [Music] receiver replacing the power supply itself is a daunting task but once it's in it's going to be good for a very long time now when we went to do the heat sinks they're not just removable you actually had to remove the entire board on the side of the amp just to pull them [Music] off next we're going to take the capacitors off the 1980 and replace them but instead of the blue color capacitors I found some red heat shrink they we're going to put around them to give them that brand color that I want the red and the black trim off the excess on top I was actually really worried about this process but it turned out absolutely perfect but then I ran into another problem once they were installed I didn't have anything for the top of the caps and it just didn't look right so I searched the internet for a little while and finally found some rubber PVC pipe caps and they worked absolutely perfectly [Music] now that the inside is getting close to finish we got to start working on the face plate and all the knobs and switches so we have to take all of the knobs off just to remove the face plate then we can get started cleaning both of [Music] them now that we have a face plate off we have to clean the glass and we have to individually pull out every other [Music] button now that we have the heat sinks out we have to sand them down and give them something for the paint to adhere to and we have to do a couple coats of paint to make sure it looks as original as [Music] possible I was pretty worried about this part but it actually turned out really nice got a couple more pieces left but it looks brand [Music] new this is the top of the receiver I got the idea because I saw one that came in for repair to see if I can get this redone in acrylic it might be a tough task because I got to Outsource it somebody that doesn't do this kind of work but if we could take this do it in a clear plastic like the clear HPM 100s and then get the logo right there in the center with like stars going throughout it be sweet I didn't know what I was going to get when I order this led logo but it turned out really good what do you think looks nice look at that we're going to take this put this on the front of the speakers and just as I was testing it out John showed up with the turntable plimp dude I was looking at those pictures he we got to talk about speakers it's nothing horrible but I want to just figure out something nothing horrible now the plint looked really good but what do you mean we got to talk about the speakers this had me really worried [Music] so what do it like go over top the original no I we sand it all off peel it all off sand it off then we had the Bondo anywhere there was a um an issue with the have pretty much the old Speaker Cabinet sand it with a block to make it as straight as possible and then revener it wow no I think that's fine okay looks [Music] great so a week before we needed to deliver this receiver the acrylic top was done and I needed to go up and try it on the receiver unfortunately when we were there we got in a little trouble pretty cool right that cool you like that oh what was that shoot oh my gosh uh yeah where did that did that just come from here it just shot out the bottom I saw like a spark come out like right around here too yeah smell it might be like a a cap or is there any like burn marks or anything I have to open it up we have to check the bottom that's not good that could set us back days and if I have to order parts it could be weeks so now the biggest problem isn't that we still have to work on the acrylic topper for the 1980 but now the 1980 is blown and smoked and we have a major problem because it's like a week until we have to deliver this as a finished product to Keem and I may have to replace Parts like this could be bad and I have no idea what's wrong I can't find the source of of what's going on when I was there I just I couldn't find it so to take it back to the store but obviously I did something when putting the platter on so or the acrylic topper [Music] on so we found out what the pop was and it was these wires right here when we put the top on it disconnected those wires and that's what caused the big spark right up in there [Music] so we're out packing the car and John texts me hey I'm on my way and I'm worried because he's hours away from us where his shop is so I'm hoping he gets to us before we have to drive all this stuff up the keing luckily he got to the shop right before we needed to leave brought the acrylic top and it looked perfect but bigger news he had the speaker girls finalized with the LEDs built in so the receiver's done the speakers are done the turntable's done the Grill's done the acrylic tops done we've got everything together but we're missing a cartridge for the turntable and a pair of headphones and for that we decided to go to Japan where the turntables are [Music] made [Music] just kidding we're in Ohio at audio technico [Music] so while we were there we went down in the QC area and we get to look at like cartridges under microscopes and all this stuff and see some like very rare pieces of high-fi History she were able to get Keem a red cartridge with like a gold St stylus on the end to match his system and not only that but the guys were able to dig up this pair of headphones from like almost 20 years ago that were in keem's exact colors now that the system is complete we're driving up to keems which is just hours and we're just sitting in the car with butterflies in our stomach hoping that this system works we didn't show him anything that we did it was a complete secret I just told him I need an empty rack but amongst the hours of conversation we had on the way up there we realized he may not have any vinyl to play on his new turntable so we had to make a pit stop so he likes 80s rock and 80s music so I got a rock collection we got Boston because Boston rocks of course you can't not have back and black got some You original pressing from 87 St with Guns and Roses Judas Priest and I'm going to Rick roll them as soon as I got done buying all that vinyl I got a text saying that he would really like a Chris Stapleton album with no other vinyl stores in the area I had one last shot going to a Barnes & Noble and it worked out at this point in the trip I'm just hoping I didn't mess anything up that everything matched and would go well together I didn't forget any chords because we're here and there's nothing I can do about it [Music] Showtime all right I didn't want Keem to see any of the high-fi system before the big reveal so I decided I was going to give the techniques to Mikey for him to take Keem up to the cabin and show him that while you guys are up at the cabin checking this piece out I'm going to set up the rest in the house so when you guys get back from the cabin you'll be in for the big reveal this is the new top wait a minute right oh it's like engraved yeah it's like a car hood yeah so this goes here but it also can go [Music] there oh my God wait a minute he's going to love that this is sick I feel like it's Christmas morning it's my birthday all tied into one I'm over the moon my expectation are like pretty high but I don't know dude you guys have been hyping this up so much I I don't really know what to expect let's hope it's not a hype up and then it's just let down time to find out what we got cooking here oh my God the keemstar logo that is sick more than what you were expecting or no words oh my gosh that is amazing beautiful beautiful work oh my god let's get it plugged in oh it's beautiful you guys crushed it you guys absolutely crushed it the the back is to me like the work that you guys have done back here is just absolutely insane banana plugs like so necessary makes my life so much easier cuz I'm always like unplugging plugging back in testing this testing that Jesus music I am feeling blessed right now what am I in for back at the house like if you guys did that with this what did you guys do with the 1980 dude I'm so so excited I'm so happy we finally finally got it done we're ready to unveil it and keem's on his way back at that point I think I felt very good about it it looked so good I think it was probably the best system that we have ever built but now it's time to see what he thinks oh my god oh oh my God oh my God oh my God completely knock this out of the park it's amazing so where do I even begin we did this so This literally last minute turned out perfect but I did it so that you can take the girls off and it can still you know so if you want to listen to with the girls off there's no wires running through so I made this like a car hood okay so we redid All the caps in your colors so the Caps are red with black tops and then this is a car hood so you could put it down like that and then you can put it up in here in a little sand and at night you'll get a little glow I'm in disbelief like I'm an actual disbelief everything on the back redone everything's in red right so red and black all throughout it's beautiful new wood wood matches on everything right we did the front front looks real nice then we did a turntable we made a turntable to match it so it's all custom fully automatic so you just hit start it'll go and then your fait deck cuz I thought you like that one so like that's got to be part of it and then we can streamer up with it so we went to Audio Technica in Cleveland and they we got the red cartridge for you with gold so it's one of their premium cartridges and then these are actually like 2005 I think but they're in like that bright red color you what this is like I told you 10 times more what I was expecting like this is so sick those speakers like with the the light up logo like that's oh my thank you thank you if you need to tune up some classic stuff go to Just audio I'm just I'm just still in disbelief like you guys crushed this oh my God okay let's let's listen to this thing Chris Stapleton [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah [Music] I feel like Chris ston is right around the corner Chris this is like 10 times better than i' ever even dreamed of I always wanted a turntable but it had to be like wood it had to match the the SX 1980 and that's the one I mean it's just everything came together so damn good it looks so good it's so on brand for me it is me it's I am so glad I call it you guys oh for sure oh yeah there's one last thing stop talking about silver cuz they don't make this stuff in Black okay so oh my your matching cassette deck with the wood all came through and the cool thing about this actually had this deck hooked up for about 2 we yeah in the shop and it's got Auto reverse so you don't have to switch anything way on that note you're not going to believe who called me next you know YouTube already knows what video you want to watch next well it's this one right here so if you like the video you just watch you're absolutely going to love this one

Channel: Just Audio

Views: 15,578

Keywords: best audio system, dramaalert, keemstar, vintage stereo restoration, vintage hifi system, vintage stereo system, audio technica, vintage stereo, vintage audio, vintage hifi, best receivers, vintage receiver, vintage audio repair, best receiver, pioneer sx-1980, vintage hifi store, vintage stereo collection, best vintage turntables, receiver wars, pioneer, best vintage speakers, vintage receiver repair, vintage audio system, vintage stereo repair, pimp my ride, stereo wars

Id: fHN9JWRBmm0

Length: 31min 47sec (1907 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024