Here are some pics to chew on........this mod was a PITA but not so horrible for anyone with enough patience to see it through.
Swapped out the stock Thermax 18 awg on the V+ V- rails with 20 awg soft annealed solid silver (5 nines stuff) in Teflon tubing in both units (PSU/AMP). The rest of the wring is the Mundorf silver/gold stuff (24 awg). It took all 8 ft (Mundorf) and around 2 ft of solid silver to complete this job
Here you can see a good way to access the ACSS/XLR and remaining RCA inputs. As Les said last week a hex wrench allows the Data header pcb to be removed out of the way to get at the DC line jacks while giving just enough room to work with WRT to the ACSS/RCA/XLR jack. The side panels, rear pillars have to be removed....kinda self explanatory since room to maneuver is at a premium. It can be done by removing the XLR inputs and setting those aside until you have the bottom row wired up.
Just another shot of the tight spaces and how close the relays come to the rear pads.
One important note about the silk screening of the pads. The ACSS pads have the + - pads reversed. Pin 2 for both channels (ACSS + signal) goes to the - pad between gnd and +. Pin 3 is then soldered to the pcb + pad. Found that one out earlier this evening when I tested the amp...both channels were 180 degrees out of phase (it did sound pretty cool for a few minutes though). I knew it right away and quickly remedied the minor fault..
Anyway if any of you guys are thinking of a similar mod, keep this info in mind. The rest of pads for the inputs are correctly marked. The output pads area bit strange so just copy down the pin assignments for those before taking the stock wiring off otherwise you'll have a real hard time figuring out what goes where. Simply copy those outputs (and the inputs assignments for good measure) on a sheet of paper....then you are good to go
Another shot of the work as it progresses...
Just about done........the final step here is to align and dress the wiring before putting the Data board back into place..
Here is the nearly completed reassembly of the amp.......now the fun starts, evaluation
Stay tuned for some impressions to come. I found this project very well worth all the effort and somewhat minimal expense. It certainly has improved all three pieces of gear I've modified.
The last step for this amp is to replace the stock wiring to the head amp jacks and make up some custom ACSS and DC cables. That will have to wait until I have the $$ to tackle that job.
I almost forgot, before I completed this mod today I had a really good listen to the head amp output over the last weekend. The differences from stock are even more magnified using cans, wow ! A definite improvement. I wonder what's in store using some decent wire here in place of the stock Thermax ? I look forward to that day (typical DIY junkie I am) when I can find that out for myself !
This sucker took me about 3.5 days to complete (not including the time spent with the DOA board for the RE1) but that entails work on the CD7/RE1 and Phoenix. I'd say the Phoenix mod took the lion's share of that time (2 days for sure). It's a pretty simple mod from a technical standpoint which is why I was able to tackle it
Time to spin some discs !
Peete.