Bosun Swannie! Let me start right off with a tip of the Captain's hat for the Shelby Lynne reccomendation. I just listened to the whole album of "Just a Little Lovin' " and it's been added to my ever growing songbird list. Gorgeous voice, gorgeous songs and a superb recording!
I'm also very pleased to hear that my First Mate is trimming his jib with some tasty op-amps. Isn't this fun! We start off with an amp that is a stupid good performer at a ridiculously low price and then we can have fun personalizing its sound. I noticed the enhancement of soundstaging the most with the 797/823 combo, followed closely be neutral tonal balance and clarity. I would agree that the clarity really shows itself with bass tracks - no more amorphous washes of seemingly texture-less low bass, nope, a smorgasbord of subtle tonalities. Marcus Miller is definitely a great choice for electric bass listening along with my go to guy, Stanley Clark. For acoustic bass, my favorite is Glen Moore playing his 1715 era Klotz double bass fiddle.
I'm not done with my op-amp swabbing. The 797BRZ/823 combination is a tough act to follow, but I'm keeping my mind and ears open to discovering some more ear-nectar. Today is a very good swabbing day at Stu's place. Arriving simultaneously are the dual 797BRZ's pre-mounted on adapters to try in place of the AD823's and also a complete set of single and dual op-amps from the Burson boys in Oz.
Its pretty cool how they put a 797BRZ on top and solder another one underneath in such a small package. Rather nicely done and very reasonably priced from Analog Metric in Hong Kong. I got a pair delivered for $40.64. The Burson Audio Supreme Sound Op-amps are very impressive to look at and even have a Joey logo for that Oz magic. They run $90 for a shipped pair of the single op-amps and $150 for the duals. If they can really outperform the 797's, then I will consider it money well spent.
I snagged this pic from their website, so all us swabbies can appreciate what is going on inside and why they cost so much more than mass produced IC op-amps. This is going to be VERY interesting. The king of discreet op-amps vs. what I consider to be a top IC op-amp. Much thanks to Dennis at Burson for hooking the Captain up. The Bursons need many hours of burn in as compared to an IC op-amp, so an honest comparison will take me at least three or four weeks of near continuous play. Stay tuned 'Mates, I got this!
Hello everyone.
Yesterday I replace the standard op-amps of my H10 with a set of Burson Supreme V5 SS-Opamp. Dual + Single, a total of 4 pieces of course.
Here are some photos!
The boxes:
Setting up....
Case opening
All op-amps set-up. I had a photo taken 'during' the process, but it was horribly out of focus so I had to drop it.
Anyway, one thing worth to mention (even if it has been told already in this thread) is that the dual op-amps are near the back of the H10, while the single are in the right side.
The Burson op-amps have a bezel whose position need to match the position of the notch of the op-amp you are going to replace. It is a very easy and straightforward process.
I am no expert and I did the whole operation in 10 minutes or so.
I only had one issue, in fact related to the gustard h10 rather than the op-amps: one of the rear screws was overtightened. Luckily, I managed to pull it out with the help of a philips screwdriver. I obviously had to replace the screw with a similar one. Nothing major.
But I simply do not understand the need of overtightening, especially with hexagon socket head screw: sometimes the head of these kind of screws is very fragile and if overtightened, it becomes very hard to extract them because they can easily worn.
Now back to listening!!with my Sennheiser HD650 (not shown here)
The boxes now contain the original op-amps:
First impressions: a very nice improvement! Enhanced detail retrieval and wider soundstage.
These are the impressions after 20-30 minutes of listening; I will report more impressions in a few days.
