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MF X-Can V2 tweaks - Page 4

post #46 of 71
11/23/05 at 10:49am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by weinstro
Where did you buy them?
Hi Rob,

I bought mine from this guy on ebay. He was selling them for £5 a pair until I opened my big mouth and said they sounded great in the X-can..... Apparantly he had a lot of enquiries and I believe he has quadrupled (or more) the price now I wish I'd taken him up on his offer of 10 matched pairs for £45 at the time (20 tubes for £45!!!) they are all brand new (NOS) in sealed cartons part number Reflector 6N23P-EV triodes..... give him a try and do quote me and the price he sold them to me for (£5 for a pair) I e-mailed him back and said I would take 10 of them off his hands for £45 but haven't heard a thing from him since
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post #47 of 71
11/23/05 at 10:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by weinstro
Where did you buy them? Did you get the matched and graded ones from Upscale Audio?

I'm also looking at NOS tubes, but finding the choices a little confusing.

Regards,

Rob
Pinky turned me on to his source. I can PM you with the details. His stock appears to be selling pretty fast. The price went up too. I ended up paying $44 for the pair (including shipping from London). Still a good price. PartsConnexion (http://www.partsconnexion.com/catalog/NOSTubes.html) also has them for $44.95 for a matched pair.

I ended up listening to them for about an hour last night. !!WOW!!
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post #48 of 71
11/23/05 at 11:48am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Juergen
Is that with the 6H23N-EBs? (your pic shows a U.S. 6922). I finally got my 6H23N-EBs today, they are currently warming up
Well, I've got 6H23N-EB in one of the V2's and JAN philips 6922 in the other (All brand new valves) The one with the Panasonic FM caps is running Philips 6922 at the moment but I'll pop some 6H23N's or Mullards in once I've finished messing about with it..... to be honest "both" V2's sound heavenly and I put this down mostly to the Panasonic caps and the input / output caps.... changing the valves "tweaks" the sound slightly but does not bring about the same level of improvement that swapping the caps and potentiometer brings about. Now that I've got two V2's and a selection of valves I'm going to do another valve comparison over the Christmas holidays and will update my valve page with the results...... funnily enough the JAN philips don't sound at all bad in the recapped V2's...... this Hi-Fi lark is enough to drive you mad!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Juergen
I ended up listening to them for about an hour last night. !!WOW!!
You like them then?
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post #49 of 71
11/23/05 at 1:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by PinkFloyd
....You like them then?
I did the original cap upgrade outlined on your page (with Pan FC’s) some time ago. In addition to the Jan Philips 6922s I also have Sovtek 6922s, JJ E88CCs and the Reflektor 6H23N’s. Up until recently I had built a PPA w/ Larocco Dynobias buffers and listened to that exclusively. Since your recent storm of V2 tweaks I have taken out my lonely V2. I’m not sure what happened last night. After only a couple hours of warming up the new valves, I put in my DVD-A copy of Yes’s Fragile and sat back and listened to it from beginning to end. I was in heaven. I noticed reverb decays that I never heard before. It felt like my spine was bolted to Chris Squires bass. (that’s a good thing ). Perhaps the planets were properly aligned or my wife was using some new cleaning chemicals. Maybe that lump of protein between my ears was cooperating. I will try again tonight to recreate the experience. If it still sounds that good then I will try and roll some of my other valves to see if that was the key.

Back to the original question.... I do like them
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post #50 of 71
11/24/05 at 12:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by PinkFloyd
Well, I've got 6H23N-EB in one of the V2's and JAN philips 6922 in the other (All brand new valves) The one with the Panasonic FM caps is running Philips 6922 at the moment but I'll pop some 6H23N's or Mullards in once I've finished messing about with it..... to be honest "both" V2's sound heavenly and I put this down mostly to the Panasonic caps and the input / output caps.... changing the valves "tweaks" the sound slightly but does not bring about the same level of improvement that swapping the caps and potentiometer brings about.
I suspect that power supply improvements and other circuit changes will have a larger impact than changing tubes. However, with the stock Philips 6922's, one thing that's driving me nuts is fairly audible tinging (microphonics).

Have you noticed this to be an issue with the Philips? Are the 6H23's or the Mullards better in this regard?

Thanks and regards,

Rob
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post #51 of 71
11/25/05 at 2:43pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by weinstro
Have you noticed this to be an issue with the Philips? Are the 6H23's or the Mullards better in this regard?
I've never experienced microphonics with the philips valves but I did with one set of Mullards. If you change the valves for another pair you'll probably find they don't suffer from microphonics....... also, if you flick the valve with your finger and hear it "zinging" then it's likely to be pretty microphonic if you flick it and it doesn't resonate then it probably won't be microphonic.

Mike.
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post #52 of 71
11/30/05 at 6:43pm
Thread Starter 

Polypropylene

Just a quick note....... the V2 responds well to polypropylene on the PSU board.

Was messing about and didn't have a 470uF polyprop to hand so made one by paralleling 7 x 70nF WIMA polyprops.... I replaced the 470uF polyester cap on the PSU board with this 490uF "bundle" and lo and behold another little tweak that's reaped benefits in the sonic department... it may be placebo but the amp sounds a bit cleaner overall with a noticeable improvement in the bass (tighter, faster and almost palpable) As I say it could be placebo it could be the polyprop caps.... whatever, another little worthwhile tweak

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post #53 of 71
12/3/05 at 4:06am
Man you do some serious tweaks.

I really think I need to pick up an X-Can V3...too bad I can't seem to get one used. 400 USD is kind of steep.
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post #54 of 71
12/3/05 at 11:23am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by VR6ofpain
Man you do some serious tweaks.

I really think I need to pick up an X-Can V3...too bad I can't seem to get one used. 400 USD is kind of steep.
$400 equates to £230 GBP so that's £20 under the retail price of £250..... not cheap but far from "expensive" when compared to some other amps that retail @ £500 + which aren't a patch on the V3 in sonic terms.

The X-Can V2 secondhand market is pretty crazy with V2's fetching "more" than their original retail price of £150. They are obviously highly regarded and I can only see their secondhand value increasing...... a true "classic" in every sense of the word and this is reflected by their scarcity, people are holding on to these amps.....if something is scarce and good quality it will have value. If the market supply of a good amp is low, the price will rise providing there is demand for it and there seems to be plenty of demand for these wonderful little amps just have a look at this auction a couple of days to go and it's already @ £124.

I don't know if the V3 will hold its value the way the V2 has (only time will tell) but you can be sure that you won't be losing half the value of the amp the minute you walk out of the shop with it... there is always demand for MF headamps (well, in the UK there is).
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post #55 of 71
12/5/05 at 1:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Juergen
I can't seem to source that pot her in the US.
Allied Electronics is a US distributor for RS. Give them a call and see if they can help.

Larry
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post #56 of 71
12/5/05 at 3:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by binary_digit
Allied Electronics is a US distributor for RS. Give them a call and see if they can help.

Larry
Unfortunately they don't carry Alps products. When Pinky originally posted the part # I found out about the Allied connection via the RS website. Searching the Allied website revealed no Alps products. I just gave them a call and confirmed this. Thanks though, the search continues.....
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post #57 of 71
12/7/05 at 7:42pm

More info needed....

Hey, a couple of follow-up questions:

What's the width of the board?

I may build a Jung super-regulator for the power supply, but would like it to fit into the same card slot as the original. Anyone tried this? Results?

FWIW, I received some "rocket logo" Russian 6h23, yesterday. I'll install these on Saturday and see how they sound.

Regards,

Rob
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post #58 of 71
12/12/05 at 6:28pm
I changed the valves and built an external PSU.

Encouraged by the improvement, I decided to fit in a bunch of capacitors (Blackgate non-polars and Elna Cerafines on the lower board - 1800uF Panasonic FM's on the upper board. I bypassed the caps with polystyrene, polypropylene and tantalum caps at 1/100 value of the electrolytics.

Unfortunately something went wrong and when I plugged it in, smoke came out of the amp. Turning it off and looking inside, it seems like one of the tantalum coupling caps and a diode on the PSU board had disintegrated. Everything still looks okay, but I fear I might have irreparably damaged it.

I need help to figure out why this happened and how to fix. If pictures will help I'll take a few.

I couldn't find the circuit diagram to show you where it all went wrong - but the blown tantalum was one of the 470uF PSU replacement and the diode was very near it.

Many thanks,

Wai Tung
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post #59 of 71
12/12/05 at 7:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Juergen
Unfortunately they don't carry Alps products. When Pinky originally posted the part # I found out about the Allied connection via the RS website. Searching the Allied website revealed no Alps products. I just gave them a call and confirmed this. Thanks though, the search continues.....
Try Mouser. Also, Alps has (or had) an online store (Alps USA). It appeared the last time I looked to be under construction.
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post #60 of 71
12/12/05 at 8:03pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fing
I changed the valves and built an external PSU.

Encouraged by the improvement, I decided to fit in a bunch of capacitors (Blackgate non-polars and Elna Cerafines on the lower board - 1800uF Panasonic FM's on the upper board. I bypassed the caps with polystyrene, polypropylene and tantalum caps at 1/100 value of the electrolytics.

Unfortunately something went wrong and when I plugged it in, smoke came out of the amp. Turning it off and looking inside, it seems like one of the tantalum coupling caps and a diode on the PSU board had disintegrated. Everything still looks okay, but I fear I might have irreparably damaged it.

I need help to figure out why this happened and how to fix. If pictures will help I'll take a few.

I couldn't find the circuit diagram to show you where it all went wrong - but the blown tantalum was one of the 470uF PSU replacement and the diode was very near it.

Many thanks,

Wai Tung
Hi Wai,

Sorry to hear about the smoke, I hate it when things like that happen You won't have irreparably damaged the amp, they're only components and can be replaced.... unless the amp has turned into molten lava then it's repairable.

OK, did you replace the 470uF caps on the PSU with 1800uF? If so the inrush current could have taken out the diode etc. Did you fully check the soldering before powering up to make certain there were no shorts between the pads? Could be a few reasons why those bits and bobs blew can you post a photo? In the meantime try replacing the blown parts with the original parts (you'll need to buy another diode by the sounds of it) and see if it works with the original 470uF caps.

Mike.
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