Headroom Home innards
Jul 29, 2009 at 2:41 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 5

robert

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I've got a Home from 1997, which had been stored for most of that time. I got it out. Sounds pretty good. But I figured swapping out the caps and resistors for top quality parts might be a good thing, given their age.

Contacted HeadRoom about upgrade, but none left and they don't do parts replacements (I guess if I sent it in for repair I'd get back stock parts) as upgrade. Mike Olson explained how to get it open. But before going off on a wild goose chase, has anyone replaced the caps and resistors in HeadRoom amps with better parts? And did the amp end up sounding any better?
 
Jul 29, 2009 at 3:19 AM Post #2 of 5
I also had one of these and was very fond of the stock sound. I would doubt that the cost and time involved in upgrading would be well spent. You would be better off building a new amp based on one of the more modern designs or just buying a new Headroom amp.
 
Jul 29, 2009 at 3:30 AM Post #3 of 5
Interesting stuff. Do you think since 1997, the quality of capacitors and resistors improved? Thus you want to update?

Or were the good caps and resistors already in existance back in 1997, it's just that Headroom did not offer the upgrade during that time period?

I'm curious to see if technology of solid state amps significantly improved since then. Interesting post Robert.
 
Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM Post #4 of 5
Quote:

Originally Posted by Zebra /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I also had one of these and was very fond of the stock sound. I would doubt that the cost and time involved in upgrading would be well spent. You would be better off building a new amp based on one of the more modern designs or just buying a new Headroom amp.


x2

The Headroom modules have improved much since then. You could do a search for the The Sloth´s review of different versions of Headroom modules. Seems that the 1997 Home is not possible to upgrade with newer modules and it wouldn't probably we cost effective anyway.
 
Jul 29, 2009 at 11:29 PM Post #5 of 5
I'm not concerned about the Image processor. I recall when they changed to a new style, post 97. May be more than once. At the time, they said they had some which were retrofit/designed to be functionally equivalent, but for the original Home form factor. IIRC. Anyway, what I'm considering is that the caps have aged a dozen years, so they could be in need of replacement, so lets go with Black Gates and AuraCaps, and since I've gotten it open, replace the signal resistors with tants.

OTOH, it does sound OK, so I guess the caps haven't yet crapped out. So I'll save it for a winter project. The heat and humidity has finally arrived here in sunny CT; sniffing solder fumes lacks panache right now.
 

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