Hello Dave and all,
Bellow is a copy of a mail I sended to Francis, a crazy electronic tweaker friend of mine, to Matt (machmat) who selled me 8 west-cap NOS paper in oil to replace the poor MKT on the signal path of my Rogers e40a and to Pierre-Etienne.
Now I know how important is to place good stuff under the wood:
Hello Francis and Matt,
As promised, here are my first impressions about my upgraded roro; Matt, as previously said, Francis made not only the replacement of the 8 mkt placed on the signal path with your west-caps but also improved the signal path with some silver/copper/teflon wiring and by suppressing the balance, changed diodes with hyper fast soft recovery and added some bypass (the original mkt) on the chemical capacitors of the power supply; To finish, he regulated the bias; that's said, let's go:
First of all, the Rogers remains...the Rogers, even if only 10 hours of burn in: it means that, i.e., it remains totaly different from the Aska 55w nirvana+. Its frequency range remains "physiological" with slightly too much spl in sub-bass, a slightly backward mid and (very slightly) too much top hights.
Also, it keeps this "airy sound", not only in trebles but in upper-mid and in low-mid;
Also, it keeps the same timbres (harmonics structure) than before, at the except of trebles which are a lot more neutral.
To summerize: it remains a valve amp, with the common characters mainly attributed to valves (and that's what I love, haha).
Now, the differences:
- less distortions on the total range and particularly on trebles: no fatigue at all, no more harsh sounds; bad cds remain bad but...less bad.
- dynamics are slightly better, transients, attacks are now distributed on the full range, not only on upper frequencies as before. Bass and sub-bass are tighter.
- image: size of instruments are the same but are better differenciated one to the other.
- soundstages: they are larger, particularly in the width; i.e., on some modern musics like world/electroacoustic, with a lot of phase effects and on, I fall completely in a much bigger volume/area: that's very enjoying for me.
Now, the most astonishing:
I listened (and am currently listening) to my old Micromega optic bit-stream because my couple of Goldmund are in the shop to be selled. Thus, I let you understand how all the above described feelings certainly will be enhanced by listening to my next (very good, haha) source (Vecteur L4.2); Pierre-Etienne knows exactly what I mean, isn't it P-E?
Francis: Thank you very much given me your time and your perfect working.
Matt: your west-caps work very well. Please, let me know if once burned-in, caps will give another sound, thanks.
Pierre-Etienne, your tweaked joli-jolida is currently very sad, it wants to be a tweaked roro, haha (perhaps in a second life...)
All IMHO and with humour (P-E)
Cheers,
