I've done so, twice.

Posted by markrohr (P) on July 4, 2006 at 13:06:46

In Reply to: Worth it to mod a non-vintage tuner? posted by Ned on July 3, 2006 at 12:43:01:

I'm not sure I can recommend it to someone who needs to find someone else to do the work.

The reason is that there is no "best" opamp, capacitor, or what-not, for every application. Some seem to think there is, but these things are circuit dependent; in one circuit a given opamp may sound great, in another it may be awful.

I've (lightly) modded the output stages of a couple of tuners along the way, most recently a Magnum Dynalab FT-11. All I did was replace the opamp, install local bypass caps for it, and replace the output caps. I installed a quality socket for the opamp and tried seven of 'em--a few I had laying around and a few new ones I hadn't tried yet. They all sounded different. Some that had sounded great in other applications sounded poor in this one, and the two I liked best sounded utterly different from one another! [Ultimately, these simple mods--along with some to the PS--improved the tuner by a lot.]

So: unless you can experiment yourself with different flavors of opamp and output caps, you'll never know if you've done the best you can, and it might even sound worse than when you started. You seem to be happy with it now--unless you do it yourself, I wouldn't mess with it.

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Worth it to mod a non-vintage tuner? - Ned 12:43:01 07/03/06 (4)

I've done so, twice. - markrohr 13:06:46 07/04/06 (2)

Re: I've done so, twice. - Estes 17:44:33 07/18/06 (0)

Re: I've done so, twice. - Ned 06:31:28 07/05/06 (0)

I've thought about it. - Sigmund 14:03:33 07/03/06 (0)

Follow Ups

I've done so, twice. - markrohr 13:06:46 07/04/06 (2)

Re: I've done so, twice. - Estes 17:44:33 07/18/06 (0)

Re: I've done so, twice. - Ned 06:31:28 07/05/06 (0)

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