Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 11, 2007 4:34:23 GMT
I recently purchased an X-150. Opened her up... hmmm.. Jamicon caps... motorola opamp... perhaps a chance for some serious improvement here. At this stage, I'm considering putting a dip-14 socket in there, and then either putting in a opa4227 (quad 2227), or a LME49740 (quad LM4562), assuming that all the specs match up. Pins are the same, voltages are pretty similar... that's about as far as my electronics knowledge knows to check. I have LM4562's with the dc caps jumpered on my X-Meridian soundcard. Apparently the bass is better out of the 2227, so I thought LM4562 out to a 4227 in the amp might get me some brilliant midrange with some nice bass too  Then a recap... Diodes look interesting too...  Any other suggestions/things I should consider? Photos shall be forthcoming sometime soon... just about to hit end of semester exams  Cheers Phil |
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 12, 2007 4:34:08 GMT
The back half or so... The opamp obscured by the cable in the centre is the Motorola MC33079P.   All that's between the two is a couple of 10,000uF 63V Jamicons. |
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 13, 2007 13:18:31 GMT
Just another one of the opamp etc...  |
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 13, 2007 15:03:02 GMT
[Electro] Cap listing:
All Jamicons...
2x 10,000uF 63V
3x 1uF 100V
4x 10uF 50V
2x 2200uF 25V
The top half of the board.. what I assume is the signal path:
4x 100uF 63V
8x 10uF 63V NP
2x 100uF 16V NP
Replacement List:
(digikey part no's)
P7492-ND - 10000uF 63V - Panasonic TS-HA
P10765-ND - 1uF 100V - Panasonic FC
P10316-ND - 10uF 50V - Panasonic FC
P12384-ND - 2200uF 25V - Panasonic FM
P10343-ND - 100uF 63V - Panasonic FC
Could somebody tell me why the UK, US and Australian variants of rs-online have no capxon stuff... but the Italian one does?
Better yet, where are the non-polar NK's available?
Also going to add a DIP-14 socket.
Then...
LME49740 (LME49740NA-ND)
or...
I *was* going to throw in an opa4227... but can't find anywhere that stocks them still...
Anyone know of anywhere, or have any spare?
Are there any non-electrolytic caps I should be replacing, and if so, could somebody point these out so I can figure out values etc.
Cheers!
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Post by yogistardust on Jun 13, 2007 18:05:21 GMT
Just replaced all the Jamicons in my A3.2 pre and A3.2 power with Panasonics TSHA and FC's. Expect a big improvement! Be careful with the Non polars. This could be a tricky one. My advise is. just leave the Jamicon NP's and listen for a few days only with the panasonics. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those NP's. I even think they sound better then Capxon's. Darker, deeper and great midrange. Your opamp replacement will do wonders. This chip from National is a star!! Leave the OPA4227 and go for this one.  If you can, replace those crappy internal leads from your RCA's to your main board as well. Only two big 10.000uf's for the PSU?! strange but acceptable! So my advise again: leave the non polars alone! |
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Post by PinkFloyd on Jun 13, 2007 19:32:14 GMT
First of all..... go to www.rswww.com and in the "find products" search box type in "non polar 100uF" it will bring up the entire capXon line  I'm inclined to disagree with yogistardust re: the Jamicon non polars sounding better than the CapXon but we all have different tastes so he is correct if he finds them better to his ears.... this is the beauty of audio you can tailor the sound to your own requirements. I fully agree with everything else Yogi suggests, you could replace the orange film caps with Evox PHE426 radial polypropylene types (RS have these) the two power supply caps you could replace with Kendiel electrolytics..... you will find them at www.audiokit.it in the capacitor section. Why not fit 20,000uF caps in their place? Of course you can also replace the Jamicons with the superb TS-HA (I would go this route, they're great caps and quite cheap too) I have no experience of the LM opamp you refer to but if it's anywhere near as good as the LM4562 then it'll be a sure fire winner Not a lot more I can say really apart from "suck it and see".... can you get a bigger toroidal transformer in there? May also be worth doing but something I'd leave for another day, get the caps in first and see how it sounds. |
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 14, 2007 2:59:45 GMT
If the TS-HA's came in anything larger than 10,000uF in 63V, then I'd grab some.... At this stage I think I'll just put the TS-HA's in there. Mike - the LME49740 is the quad version of the LM4562 Cheers for the search tip too, brings them right up I'll look into the film caps tonight. A bigger torroid might just fit in there... but as you say, that can wait for a little while down the track. |
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marcm09
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Post by marcm09 on Jun 18, 2007 7:01:38 GMT
Good luck, it'll be a great amp to modify, it makes you wonder why they decided to include the transformer in with the amplifier again though, after all that marketing about having seperate power supplies on there older amplifiers and that it provides less interference. . Its probably for simplicity sake and the fact that some people dont like having a seperate box to hide away !
Your biggest improvement will be from changing the caps to panasonic FC or FM's(if you can get them, mine are still on order ! But worth the wait)... Also change the orange caps to polys and bypass the new nat or capxon caps with a 200nf polyster and a 1000pf polystyrene, I have been in the process of playing around with bypassing the NP's and Definitely prefer them .
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 19, 2007 4:21:23 GMT
Sounds good Marc I've ordered the parts from digi-key. Should get here in about 3 weeks I suppose. I'll do the orange caps a little later on, along with the capxon bypasses. Need new speakers before I can really appreciate the differences I think they're gonna make  |
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marcm09
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Post by marcm09 on Jun 19, 2007 5:49:04 GMT
It will be alot easier to push both the new np cap (from the top of the board) and a smaller bypass cap from the bottom of the board now rather then trying to solder the bypass caps to the board at a later date. Also the less times that you have to resolder mean less chance of lifting a pad, which is easily done especially if you need to change some of the caps more that a couple of times (for various reasons ie not sounding right or the fact that you decide to add bypass ones) Good luck the bypass caps are easy to fit now and not very expensive at all and in my experience well worth fitting to the non polars at least, the caps that I don't bypass are the panasonics FM's beacause of there low ESR. |
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marcm09
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Post by marcm09 on Jun 26, 2007 8:52:14 GMT
Hold fire with the bypass caps as I just fitted them with the other upgrades to mine and I'm not too sure about them and I'm going to try it with them removed ?
The X150 is so similar to the xa100r in alot of ways... Except mine had the teapo Caps instead of jamicon.. A also replaced the orange film caps to x2 polys but Im not too sure about them and may try the originals back in there or possibly even the evox rifa's ? But I'll prob start with the orange film caps again as I'm not too sure how much better the Rifa Evox will be compared to the X2 met polys that I used, and maybe even in fact the XA100r is not responsive to the orange film cap exchange... Anyhow I'll let you know once I have the right recipe as it should be very similar to your amp in terms of tweeks.... By the way they are a LOVELY sounding amp... even better than the Cyrus that I had !
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jun 29, 2007 7:21:43 GMT
Sounds good Marc My parts should be here in about 2 weeks. |
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marcm09
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Post by marcm09 on Jul 2, 2007 10:25:29 GMT
[glow=red,2,300][/glow]Cool - Stick with the caps change, forget the bypass caps its a step backwards.
To start with the x150 and even the xa100r are lovely sounding amps and to be honest the reason why (and some people may disagree) is partly because of design, expect about a 10% increase in sound quality, if you have modded (or have) an xcan you can expect much better improvements then modding this amp, however worth the effort, just not as much as the xcan which is still my favorite piece of audio equipment ! Good luck
P.s looking at your pictures your XA100 looks so similar inside to the XA100 that its not funny lots of similarities Even 6 years later !
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Jul 4, 2007 13:29:54 GMT
Haha... nice little price hike for that new box then eh? The opamp change should make a nice difference me thinks |
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Aug 26, 2007 2:36:33 GMT
Electrolytics and new opamp arrived on Friday  Getting a mate to install them all on Monday |
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Post by gns on Aug 26, 2007 3:24:44 GMT
I recently purchased an X-150. Opened her up... hmmm.. Jamicon caps... motorola opamp... perhaps a chance for some serious improvement here. At this stage, I'm considering putting a dip-14 socket in there, and then either putting in a opa4227 (quad 2227), or a LME49740 (quad LM4562), assuming that all the specs match up. Pins are the same, voltages are pretty similar... that's about as far as my electronics knowledge knows to check. I have LM4562's with the dc caps jumpered on my X-Meridian soundcard. Apparently the bass is better out of the 2227, so I thought LM4562 out to a 4227 in the amp might get me some brilliant midrange with some nice bass too Then a recap... Diodes look interesting too... Any other suggestions/things I should consider? Photos shall be forthcoming sometime soon... just about to hit end of semester exams Cheers Phil If it's that crap why do people buy? It must be Michaelson Worship |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2007 3:36:20 GMT
No, Graham. It's mainly dishonest bloody reviewers !
SandyK
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xerxes
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Post by xerxes on Aug 26, 2007 12:48:12 GMT
I'm surprised to see that a large(ish) manufacturer is still using all through hole components. I took a peak inside my Cyrus 8vs amp a while back and apart from a few components it's pretty much all SMDs. As far as I know, apart from the original Cyrus 1 & 2 amps from back in the eighties, Cyrus have used SMDs in all their electronics.
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Post by PinkFloyd on Aug 26, 2007 17:38:00 GMT
Come on man, some of their gear sounds bloody excellent and the little £129 X-CAN v2 is a friggin' classic |
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leo
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Post by leo on Aug 26, 2007 19:46:26 GMT
I've heard quite a few of the MF hi-fi amps including the Nuvista range, not really my cup of tea but look well built.
Just be careful replacing things like op-amps, ideally a service manual would be handy first
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Spirit
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Post by Spirit on Sept 17, 2007 4:01:36 GMT
Graham.... mostly dishonest reviewers... and a certain level of stupidity on my part. That said, after the opamp change, and swapping about 2/3rds of the caps in there (I missed a few with my initial look through), the soundstage has been brought forward a lot, detail in the top end is there in bucketloads, bass is also more defined - less mushy. Imaging has improved too. I'm loving the 4562 series of opamps. Gonna figure out what other caps I need to replace in the next few weeks, and possibly look at diodes as well. |
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