X-80 internals

[ijoel]

So here are the internal pics of my X-80 that I've ment to put up for ages. There are some good ones of the X-150 online elsewhere (http://rockgrotto.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=c&action=print&thread=1171) but some other views here as no phono section in the X-80. Would like to do some mods to this amp, but scared about taking it apart and doing soldering. Wonder how similar this is to other Musical fidelity amps? Is the pre-amp section the same as head phone amps?

















Regards,

Joe

[xerxes]

It looks to me as though the X-80 and X-150 use the same PCB. In the X-150 I can see that there are 4 output power transistors per channel, whereas in yours it looks like there are only 2.

I wonder whether it's possible to turn your X-80 into an X-150 by simply adding the missing transistors, or whether the values of some of the other components are different as well, maybe the X-150 uses higher power transformer than the X-80 for example and it's not that straight forward.

[xerxes]

Going wildly off topic, when I did a Google image search for "musical fidelity x-80" imagine my surprise when I found a picture of my own bicyle: www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=musical+fidelity+x-80&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1263&bih=1084&pdl=500&wrapid=tljp133076926822408&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Ee9RT4PrBsfG8QOb3rDxBQ



Weird!

[ijoel]

I know what you mean about the similarities, I do think I could put in the extra power transistors. I believe MF had that as a £50 upgrade for a while, so I don't think there is anything major to replace. Not sure what SAP 15 is, but I guess all of the transistors could be replaced to match?

I think google just saw that you posted that pic under musical fidelity x. Nice retro bike btw is it a marin? , I've bidded on kona explosifs before on ebay but it looks like the retro vibe has taken of in the bike world - shame really, also had my eye on these Royd Minstral SEs .. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251005786176?_trksid=p5197.c0.m619 but to expensive now.

Thanks for the reply.

[xerxes]

Nice retro bike btw is it a marin?

Yes, it's a 1990 Pine Mountain; I've owned it from new. I also have a new fangled carbon fiber bicycle with front suspension, but I still love the Marin, there's something really nice about the ride with steel frames and rigid forks. Funny you should mention the Kona Explosif, I keep looking at those, probably one of the lightest 90's steel frames you can get and they're supposed to ride really nicely.

With regard to the amp, I imagine similar changes to those made to the X-150 would be a good place to start. Swapping all the electrolytic capacitors for better ones would be pretty straight forward, it's easy to identify their values and fairly easy to remove and replace them.

Mike might be able to give you a better idea of what improvements you might expect if you just replaced the caps, he would also know better than I would what else might be worth changing and what might bring about the most dramatic improvements.