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24.126.150.150
They sound like great suggestions.I have a few questions.
What is musicoat and where do you get it?
The diamod dust/c37 mix sounds very interesting - where do you get the diamond dust?
What ratio do you mix them together and what do you apply it to?
Last but not least where do you get the brass screws and the titainium nuts & washers?
Thanks.
Follow Ups:
But where does one go to purchase this diamond dust?
basically, you have to consider the hazards of any superfine particualtes. Recent developments in nano materials and exotic new forms of matter (fullerenes and nanotubes) have shown that some can be unexpectedly, and extremely dangerous. Originally the fullerene carbons (a.k.a. buckyballs) we thought of as essentially benign until research began to show that they could cause severe brain damage in test animals. Lucky me, I was about to start experimenting with fullerenes when I ran across an article detailing an experiment that made me terrified of ever going near raw fullerenes.Having said that, diamond appears to be completely unlike fullerenes, and generaly unlike other dangerous particulate materials such as silica dusts, in that diamond lacks a surface electrical charge (so it won't stay suspended in air like a smoke carbon particle) nor will it react with the human immune system (to the best of my knowledge, which is woefully incomplete, and new research is always appearing anyway that changes the previous ideas of even the best informed people in the room)... so, as far as we know, diamond is "biocompatible".
There have been certain claims that have later been dismissed as alarmist and poorly informed that diamond retains its razor sharpness no matter how finely it it powdered, thus forming microscopic knives that enter the body and cannot be removed. It is true that diamond particles have exceptional cutting power. However, in all of the reading I have done, no one has shown the theory that diamond acts like an abrasive poison to be true. There don't appear to be unusual patterns of disease in the gem cutting undustries. Material Safety Data Sheet only states that diamond can act as an abrasive irritant.
In my own activites, I consider it to be safe enough to work with. However, it would be an excellent idea to be cautious and conservative in handling diamond powders. Always use a good industrial respirator with HEPA grade filtration, work in still air away from drafts, carefully spoon the material, don't dump it from one container to another (even a comparitively large 15 micron particle dust will puff out a cloud if it is shifted from one container to another), wipe the area down afterwards with an oiled cloth (Lemon Pledge is great)... keep the project out of the house, well away from children, pets, food...
The finest diamond I have worked with is 15 micron. I may go down to 5 micron as it will probably suspend better in the C37 lacquer. 15 micron settles very quickly so the coating isn't as uniform as I would like. When I take some 15 micron and shift it from the original bottle to a working container it will puff out a small cloud of dust if I am not very slow and deliberate. The funny thing is that because diamond has no zeta potential it immediately drops to the floor like the anti gravity field that keeps smoke up is suddenly turned off. This may not be as true of the finer dusts which may suspend in air for a longer time.
To get diamond to suspend in a thin medium like Musicoat it may be necessary to use an ultra fine dust in the micron range. 15 micron will suspend superbly in a viscous medium like epoxy, sufficiently well in a thinner liquid like C37, and probably not at all in Musicoat.
thanks for the explaination on how to hande the dust. It seems as dangerous as asbetos but I like being heathy so I would handle it appropriately. My next question is what do you do with it?
I don't know what the health hazards are relative to asbestos. One major difference is that asbestos (chrysotile, ambesole forms) are fibers that lodge in the lung and cause strong biological resoponses (powerfully bio-incompatible). One of the strange paradoxes of diamond MAY be that the finer particles are actually safer (the cells called macrophages can engulf them and remove them safely), where larger particles may remain longer and do more harm if an immune cell cannot remove it effectively. This is pure speculation. However, if you treat it with the same respect you'd treat asbestos, you're making a wise decision....1. you can blend it with coating material and use it as a paint. I.E. C37 lacquer.... again, the 5 micron may give a more consistent result due to the rapid settling of the 15 micron, but my results with the 15 micron, in spite of unevenness, have been sonically impressive.
2. you can mix it with resins like epoxy and use it as a potting or sealing material. 15 micron is great for this.
3. You could spray a high temp adhesive on metal such as a heatsink and then coat it with large grit, here you are looking at the mesh sizes as you would find on sandpaper. I believe that YBA does this with their top of the line amplifiers (or did, are they still in business ???)
4. If you are extremely rich and like extreme gestures you could fill tubing in equipment or speaker stands with large grit... although diamond isn't terribly dense, I think it has a specific gravity of 3.5, it feels like a light metal in the hand
5. as for Musicoat... heck if I know, tempting idea, perhaps a tiny quantity of 1/2 micron shaken, not stirred, in the petit musicoat vial... although my impression is that they're doing fundamentally distinct things, Musicoat is more like a static reducer, not a vibration modifier.
In your five tweaks you mentioned painting the bottom of an amp with C37. So you could take either the 5 or 15 micron size diamond dust mix it with c37 and paint the bottom of a preamp and or an amp as well?How would the results differ from using the C37 with diamond dust or just using the C37 alone that is if you painted the bottom of a amp or a preamp or a DA?
the bottom was painted with straight C37, the higher temperature formula... one fairly thin layer, the result was a decent improvement in coherence, sweetness, surely not mind boggling, a good solid base hit...I took the lid off the Evo4 and turned it upside down, then took a 2 ounce bottle of high temp C37 and mixed it with about 150 carats if I recall correctly of 15 micron. Stirred vigorously although the diamond settled with unusual speed and formed a heavy paste towards the botton of the mixing bottle. I worked from the outside edges of the case inwards, so the center of the top was painted with a thick C37/diamond paste that I tried to flatten and even out as much as I could. That set up for a few days at a warm room temperature then went on the amp... fired it up, couldn't believe what I was hearing, gobs and gobs of new information...
After that experience I started researching the methods of the great violin makers. They seem to have layered pure varnish with a mineral loaded varnish then covered with a pure varnish. This may give the perfect balance between speed and intesnity of diamond and the sweetness of C37. To do it again I would coat the bottom first with an ounce bottle of C37 (depending on the size of the amp you may need 1/3 more or 1/3 less), let it sit for 2 days, hook it up and play it for a week while the C37 hardens from the warmth of the amp,
then I would suspend about 50 carats of 5 micron in another ounce, paint that on, repeat the cure sequence, and slowly build it up until it hits perfect tuning. Each amp will be different, some may need two layers, some may need five... the greatest surprise to me was how sensitive digital amplifiers can be to vibration and how well they respond to resonant tuning. I have never tried this with a standard SS amp or a tube amp. I did a lot of initial investigations with a Spectron Musician II and other tuning tools, found the Spectron strangely unresponsive, it would clean up alright, but nothing I did could ever bring it into the magical region.
So you are doing this to digital amps that sounds great. I was looking at doing this to a Pass X350.5 amp which is quite different then a digital amp. What do you think?
Chances are excellent that there are slots or perforations on the bottom to help chimney out the excess heat. This will probably increase the resonant ring of the plate. On the other hand the 350.5 is a heavy beast at 150 lb., my efficient Evo4 is a mere 36 lb. The sheer mass of the 350.5 may greatly reduce the resonances that a light sheet metal structure is sensitive to. My estimate is that the effect would be more subtle on the pass. However, the Pass has some impressive heatsinks in facing rear. Heatsinks have a longstanding, and well deserved reputation for adversely coloring sound. You could buy the highest temperature grade (45 C.) C37 directly from the Ennenmoser website, as you can't buy 45 C. grade here in the USA, mix the diamond and paint the sinks. The risk is that if you don't like what you hear you're stuck with a fiercely resistant coating and no resale market. You may be better advised to experiment with the Marigo VTS dots on the sinks (6 mm. black dots a good choice) and hear how much difference this makes. If you want to coat the bottom of the amp, add some quality thinner and build up fine layers. This way you keep the changes within controlled increments instead of throwing a hail mary and hoping you'll get the sound you want. Remember, when the amp changes tonality, even if for the better, other choices you made to get the optimal sound from the untreated amp, your power cord, the receptacle in the wall, the interconnects, all of these may have to change too.
That sounds like a good plan to me. I like the sound of the Marigo dots. They are very good used - properly. Thanks for all your help. Happy New Year!
I am only familiar with the Musicoat, Musicoat deluxe actually. I have treated all of my gear with Musicoat. Musicoat in my opinion is the best upgrade tweak I have ever tried. I only know of two places to get Musicoat, TRT-Wonder (manufacturer: http://www.trt-wonder.com/) or Michael Percy. Check out the speal that TRT-Wonder has on their website regarding the Musicoat. With my gear(SS) the results they claim that will be achieved was about 95% accurate. "HUGE" performance upgrade for the money on my gear.Oh, this stuff is not cheap though, a tad over $100 for a tiny (3 drops maybe) bottle. On my gear, the most positive profound audible difference was on my pre, then transport, then DVD transport, then DAC then the AMP. Also worked really well on the Mills resistors on my speaker xovers. Give the Musicoat at least a week to dry before critical listening. Another good tweak is to clean your internal contacts on the fuses and fuse holder. Then apply Walker Audio SST to those fuse contacts.
Good Luck!
cdc
Thanks for the site for Musicoat. The site addresses a number of my concerns with solid state gear. You use it on IC's in the pramp, DA, cd drive but where on your amp have you used it? Have you treated the transitors and or mosfets as well? If you treat ressistors which ones' do you do - the ones just in the signal path or in the power supply?
That is a good question! I originally treated everything inside the amp. The amp I am speaking of is a Proceed AMP2. After the treatment of the Musicoat the sound was too warm, there was a rolloff at about 17Khz. Even allowing the Musicoat 4 days to dry I was unhappy with the loss of HF detail. After the 4th day I decided to undue the Musicoat with rubbing alcohol. This was easy to do and brought the amp back to its original sonic state. What I immediately noticed is that I miss the warm rich (tube like) after Musicoat sound. So I re-treated the amp with Musicoat. The difference the second time is that I did not treat the electronics associated with the power supplies. This yielded the sound I was seeking.Only the Proceed AMP2 did I even consider undoing the Musicoat treatment. I was extremely satisfied with the results obtained after treating all of my other gear. What I did was treat one piece of gear at a time. One hour after treating the transport for example I would re-insert it back into the system and see if there were any sonic difference. At least with my gear, each and everytime the sonic difference was very noticable and gave me a huge grin.
cdc
On your other pieces did you not treat the pieces in the power supply as well?On the amp did you treat the transitors as well?
Thanks.
On your other pieces did you not treat the pieces in the power supply as well? Yes I did on the other gear.On the amp did you treat the transitors as well? Yep did that too.
cdc
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