My Modwright Oppo BDP-83 Review
 

At long last, I am finally at the point of being able to fully enjoy the work of Dan Wright and his terrific modification of my Oppo BDP-83 Blu-Ray player. I have wanted to post my review of the player for some time, but have not been able to do because of ongoing technical difficulties. Before I post my review of the player, I wanted to give a little background around what has happened over the past few months.

I previously owned a Belkin PureAV 1500 UPS/Power Conditioner for my system that had worked very well and I really liked the functionality of it. Unfortunately, it started acting up and the UPS battery in the unit died. This unit is no longer manufactured by Belkin, and they do not supply replacement batteries. It turned out that the unit was defective and was causing a melting down of the custom power supply that is part of the analog section of the modified player. I had received my Oppo BDP-83 back from Dan after he made updates to the original modifications he made to my player to bring it up to current spec back in March. I plugged the unit into my system, and within 60 seconds the power supply melted down and the unit was no longer operational. This happened on two occasions before we were able to narrow down the Belkin as the likely root cause of the issue. Dan completely rebuilt the power supply and analog stage both times that this happened, and was very gracious and took a lot of time on his end to try to troubleshoot what the root cause could be to make sure nothing strange was happening with the player itself. I worked hard on my end to try and figure out what was going on, because at the time I had no indication that my Belkin unit was having issues until the battery in the unit died and I started hearing weird switching and clicking sounds. I quickly pulled all of the rest of my equipment from the Belkin unit and contacted Belkin’s customer service to let them know about the unit acting up and likely being the cause of the damage to my equipment. I was able to negotiate a return of the unit to Belkin for a full refund of my purchase price, which I have since applied to a new APS PurePower 2000 which has similar functionality as the Belkin unit had but of course is a much better unit with the power regeneration and other features.

I will post my actual review of the Modwright Oppo BDP-83 as a part 2 in this thread later this weekend, but I want to make a special point of expressing my sincere thanks and appreciation to Dan Wright and his excellent customer service. He really went out of his way on the two additional occasions I had to send my player back to him to not only rebuild the unit, but to do a lot of additional troubleshooting and verification to make sure it was fully tested and working properly. This has not been a fun ordeal to say the least, but I now have had the unit installed in my system for the past week, and finally have a happy ending!

Jeff.......Glad to know the Modwright Oppo is back home and in premium condition. What a pain in the rump to have to go through all of that.

Kudos to Dan Modwright for backing up his work eventhough the issue was somewhere else in the chain. Jeff...glad to hear all is well now. Looking forward to hear your thoughts on the Modwright modifications. Just to be clear though, you have the Oppo BDP-83 modded by Dan not the SE version, is that correct? I know the mods are similar but obviously the main difference will be the DAC chipset. I am assuming his mods to the analog power supply are the same whether it is a BDO-83 or a BDP-83 SE that is being modifed. Thx

Cyril - you are correct, I have the regular Oppo BDP-83, not the SE version. I was one of the original 150 chosen by Oppo to be an early adopter of the BDP-83, way before the SE version was announced or available. As soon as the BDP-83 arrived, I immediately contacted Dan Wright as I knew it would be a terrific platform for his modifications, and he agreed.

The differences between the Modwright modifications for the regular 83 and the SE version are minor. The SE version has it's own DAC-dedicated clock that the regular 83 does not have, so the clock upgrade that Dan completes as a part of his modification work does not apply. Otherwise they are pretty much the same. Note that the modifications are much more than an upgrade of just the analog power supply - it is a complete replacement of the stock analog stage with a proprietary Modwright design with it's own dedicated power supply, along with upgrades of the stock power supply, the Burson clock upgrade for the regular 83, and dampening of the chassis and drive (which I will add is significant and adds to the weight and heft of the player).

Dan has more info on the technical details and options for his modifications on his website: ModWright

Thx Jeff. Looking forward to your review of the mods. :thumbsup:

I was very fortunate to meet Dan Wright in 2008 and spend some time talking with him at RMAF. There are so few individuals where the owner has the level of involvement and concern for the end user as Modwright does. Plus he is genuinely a very nice guy.

In the past I owned one of his LS36.5 pre-amps and the level of quality and detail in his products is superb.

I do not have any Modwright products, but I have spokenwith Dan on several occasions, and he is a honest and sincere person. :thumbsup:

I have to make an apology for not getting to posting my review yet as I had intended to - instead of having time to do the final listening and writing that I had hoped to over the weekend, I ended up spending a good portion of my time over the weekend doing a full rebuild of my dad's laptop computer for him instead... :sigh:

My plan is to do the rest of my review in two parts - the first will be my review of the Modwright Oppo BDP-83 based on my impressions of the player compared to the stock player in my system. I will have that posted in the next day or two. The second part will be a comparision of my player to the McIntosh MVP-881 that my dad owns. I hope to be able to make that comparison in both my system and his system (MC402, C-46, PMC OB1i's) to make it even better from a two channel perspective.

Stay tuned... :yes:

Jeff...you are not on a deadline here :D. You can submit your thoughts/review whenever you so desire if at all. We are all appreciative of your time and effort in doing this as we get to learn and expand our knowledge base from your willingness to put in the time to do this. So thank you and looking forward to it whenever you get to it. Thx :thumbsup:

Jeff.......Exactly what Cyril said. :thumbsup: