Oh I'm sorry I missed this post last weekend or I would have responded earlier. I guess I was too sidetracked with how freakin amazing my stereo has been sounding.
Everything has really settled in nicely after the 50hr mark, and now it's really opened up to be just gorgeous. Open, airy, dynamic slam, great tone to guitar and drum (especially floor toms!!) but there's no more edginess or artificial loudness effect anymore. Everything is smooth, well layered in its place, and 3d depth for days. Albums like Jazz At The Pawnshop or Alice In Chains MTV Unplugged absolutely put you inside that room with the performance.
I did also find that leaving this amp on 24/7 helps things as well. For some reason, after the 48hr mark it really sounds good. That could be the circuit itself, or the giant psu caps, but I just leave it on nowadays. Also I have the volume knob about 80% as this unit always had a tiny buzz at full volume on my system. My room is super small and sitting 5' away from speakers means alost any noise is audible. 80% on amp makes my preamp around the 12 o'clock mark, maybe a little more on the real fun listening days but still dead silent with ear on speaker.
As hindsight is 20/20, it really feels all the upgrades are a sum of the parts and that one by itself fixed one issue but creates another. Power supply creates more oomph and drive, but doesn't fix detail. Connectors fixed detail but became too much of a good thing, opamps opened soundstage but doubled down on too much detail, then capacitor mod was final piece to set everything in place. Running the Miflex as my high-pass @90hz was just icing on the cake for opening everything up to a gorgeous sound. I guess it's proof that everything matters and need to create balance. All in all, upgrades are worth every penny of the roughly $600 total invested, and I'd bet you'd all be astonished how good this thing sounds. Most people won't dive head first down this upgrading rabbit hole, but it was a hell of a fun project to learn with the end result being pretty rad!
