Projects, rebuilds and or modifications….

barrysandy there’s a guy on WBF who,s done a beautiful job on his ref 40 the same resistor upgrade along with extensive more mods, look it up its worth a look up to see the extent he has gone with many photos of his journey.

A couple months ago I replaced the g luxman electrolytic caps with Nichicon FW and resistor with a Audio Note 1/2 w and the ac inlet with furutech ncf in two W4S LPS powering the router and fmc the second powering fmc and aqvox switch.

Clean power is a Must in the digital area with usually minimum expense and the greatest amount of sound improvements.

The biggest joy I get from modding is the steps of improvement and the sq improvements you can achieve with the proper mix and there are many sideway moves and a few set backs.

“The biggest joy I get from modding is the steps of improvement and the sq improvements you can achieve with the proper mix and there are many sideway moves and a few set backs.”

Agreed. Regardless of the modifications being a win or a loss, it is knowledge acquired. The school of hard knocks, if you will. 

Another one I’m trying to workaround is the VPI Periphery Ring. My main table has an 11 1/2” platter that I’m quite happy with. Unfortunately the ring requires a 12” platter. Found some 1/4” o-ring material. Going to try to make a ring spacer for the periphery ring. 

The school of hard knocks, my father used to say he had a masters from the university of hard knocks. Hadn’t heard that in years.

I’ve been in the middle of designing a fully remote, all-discrete integrated amp going on 3 years now :-) So many details o work out, mostly from scratch. switching, switching logic, display logic, EMI immunity, gain stage, RIAA stages with 1500X amplification (can you say "low noise critical?") headphone amps, thermal control, DC sensing and shutdown, discrete volume and balance, human factors, ...... And once something is done, i learn how to improve it. Getting very close to the DFM stage tho, once i fix a few dozen lines of logic control code and refine the active ripple rejection i’m testing out (emphatically not a regulator)

The learning is a ton of fun, and as noted above, the pattern learning of "what makes what difference, and what, surprisingly, makes no difference or harms the perceived sound" (last one is rare, whew)

It has also forced me to go back and do far more extensive benchmarking of my older designs so that i have a reference for improvement. Sometimes that is a flattering experience such as when i measured, under roughly half load, my output stage power supply from 25 years ago, employing tube type PS design to a solid state amp, and measured less than 8mV ripple on the rails. i Concluded that using that product as my test mule was pointless since i was approaching the limits of field measurement. for the non nerds 1mV = 1/1000 volt (rms in this case). In a smaller, vastly cheaper product however the ripple rejection circuitry will yield great benefits. Now to prove/confirm it soudns the part.