valve amp etc......

Hi

this is just a breif note to thank pete for coming over yesterday

we got some interetsing jobs done...


1) pete did some mods to my recently acquired valve amp.....namely taking the volume pot out.

2) as discussed esle where we had a play with the lathe, producing some support cones.

We replaced my solid cones with ones drilled to take ball bearing.

Similar ones were placed under the cdp.

3) he showed me how to correct the bias on the valve amp.

4) We tried some different cable to replace the naim nac5 I am using.

5) We disconnected the entech dac, leaving the dac in my A5z to do the work.

6) pete brought me a spare rack to try......though i haven't rigged it up yet! cheers pete.

7) we tried petes best(?) cables (rhodium pete?)....very nice! .......very smooth! .....give them a listen!


Having let it warm for an hour today.....the results are impressive....


....much deeper soundstage (also observed when the volume pot was removed), greater dynamics (higher highs/lower lows....volumes),..


..Iwas almost getting almost a 3 D effect earlier....soemthing has worked here!!


unfortunaely all good things come to an end ...back into work tomorrow!!

 

The dynavox vr70e ....[as some of you may remember is a valve amp I've had in the past] this one has been modded ..but the owner had left the vol pot in place, but had fitted good rca sockets ??. So as I know how bad the standard pot was ...out it came plus it nasty wire ... this was then replaced with a set of silver in ptfe from socket to pcb [I did forget to put the 20k res in place on each channel ..but that can wait for another day]

a much cleaner dynamic presentation....the old vol pot was killing the input signal.

Anybody with one of these amps should consider the little surgery and six solder connections as a must.

I have to say I was very impressed with the ball bearing supports ...really tightened up the image

the new speaker cable... I'm not keen on the gale xl 315 over the nac5 [which is also not one of my fav's]....I just found the two runs of five metres hiding in the loft... at least it will provide a counter point to the other cable ...I think some 15amp twin and earth should sound better .

 

just thought I'd adda comment to this...no not to start a riot..but to try to relay my personal observations whist listenng.

We were playing one of petes cds with my usual cable (silver and gold pete?) .....it doing pretty nicely with the amp modded . The vocalist was producing an image I'd say about 1 foot 6 to 2 feet across.

With petes new cables i stopped the cd to comment....that image had been focused fown to 1 foot to 1 foot 6 inched. Its difficult to be accurate but i hope I'm making my point.

Also the sound was better focused , my cables more blurred.

A violin section was just had more "soul" (actually petes adjective...i can't think of a better one.)

I'd betetr shut up...i@m beginning to sound like a hifi jounalist. That cables hi on my wish list though.

No we didn't do blind testing but we did put my cables back on and noticed hte difference.

I find it fascinating that cables can do that....(as i say this is not MEANT to be provocative. )

 

yes ...gold silver
no... its a platinum alloy not rhodium