The project is finished. I did not have the time to take any photos before shipping it off to Lou Hinkley to put the final finish on the case. I have asked him for a photo or two before he packs it up.
Many mods and variations were pursued and dropped in the production of this unit.
In the end, what I thought gave the best sound was to use a completely separate section to feed the DAC chip. It has it's own transformer, Stealth rectifiers, smoothing caps, pre-regulator, reservoir caps, Bybee Music Rail, Film cap storage and then multiple Paul Hynes regulators on the main circuit board to feed the DAC chip.
The same sort of design was used for the op-amps. Separate transformer, Stealth rectifiers, smoothing caps, then two Paul Hynes Regulators. One each for the positive and negative voltages. Storage caps, film caps and Bybee Music Rails. The op-amps were changed to custom built LME49990 duals for the I/V section and singles for SS output.
The stock transformer was retained to supply AC to the high voltage and filament only. Paul Hynes regulators were used for those voltages. The K&K CCS modules were used to maintain a constant current into the Pavane output tube.The tube circuit values were changed to lower output impedance and maximize signal flow. Output coupling caps in the tube circuit were changed to Sonicaps with bypasses. Output connectors were changed to WBT Silver NextGen. RCA input is also WBT Silver NextGen. BNC is 75 ohm Canare. XLR is Neutrik silver plated. I did not use the USB or optical inlets as I do not consider them to sound very good at all.
AC inlet, fuse and fuse holder are all ACME Audio Silver Plated, Cryo-Treated. The power supplies are all point to point wired on 1/8" thick PCB material. Wiring in power supply is all NITRO. Output wiring is cryo-treated solid core copper. Digital input wiring for BNC and Coax is 75 ohm coax.
This represents about as far as I care to go with the EE MiniMax DAC. It should end up sounding exceptional after extended break-in.