Hi Wayne. Its great to see you developing so many intriguing SB2 and 3 upgrades, both in the power supplies and inside the player itself (various bypass caps and bybees). While patiently waiting on a couple SB2 std. full mod orders, I am pondering what other upgrades I might want to add. I know the long cap break-ins stretch out the learning curve for you and your pioneering clients, and it may be a couple more months before we all come to learn the relative benefits of any one new upgrade.
That said, diminishing returns suggest that each of these new upgrades would all be nice to have, but will have more subtle improvements after the big leaps you made in your basic P/S and player mods. Speaking as someone with a budget of $400-600 to add to an existing "std. full mod", I would like to see if you, and perhaps your Denver Mafia cohorts, could develop a scale of incremental sonic improvement one might expect from each of the various options. For example, we could have a few dimensions to grade, similar to Enjoy The Music (e.g. overall smoothness/ lack of grain, detail, treble sweetness, mid-range fullness, bass punch & tightness). Perhaps we could have a 100 point scale, using the std. full mod as a base line (such that 10 means an 10% improvement). We could also grade just common combos of upgrades, rather than tediously grade each one, as a start.
Any evaluation would, of course, be subjective, but for someone contemplating $ 400 just for a pair of silver bybees for analog only, I think its a fair question to ask , "how much more of an improvement can I expect over my std. mods, and where would I most notice the benefits?" I am also hoping this would help you and all your clients develop a common reference frame against which to evaluate and compare your new upgrades, beyond saying "noticeable improvement". For some an additional $500 for another 3 % improvemnt is a bargain, while for others this is hard to justify, especially for a secondary room. At least we would have a better basis for making trade-offs between the various options.
I'd like to know if others would find such a comparison scale useful as you ponder further upgrades from Wayne's ever-expanding menu, or if there is a better way to explain and evaluate the relative benefits. Regardless, its great to have so many fine-tuning options coming from Wayne's fertile lab!
Thanks. --Rob.