Rick Schultz's mod of the Gen 2:
1. PE connected directly to the board
2. Silver micas replaced to Amtrans AMCH
3. New diodes
Photos, unfortunately they can't be downloaded:
https://www.ukaudiomart.com/details...9038-pro-dsd-dac-fully-modded-by-ric-schultz/
Those types of modifications already appeared around here in 2018, it was another different approach to improve the 004. Summarized:
1. Remove fuse distortions.
2. Twist AC wires from IEC to power switch
3. Hard wire all AC connections to IEC inlet
4. Re-ground the shield wires from the transformers and hardwire.
5. Remove all steel from around the transformers and remount transformers on pieces of wood.
6. Twist secondary AC wires.
7. Apply Graphene contact enhancer on AC connectors on board.
8. Damp all rectifier diodes with constrained layer damping material
9. Damp all heatsinks with constrained layer damping material.
10. Remove all coupling caps on the spdif inputs and replace with custom pure copper wire in cotton (listened to for directionality).
11. Shorten the signal path on the unbalanced outputs and use our custom wire here.
12. Eliminate one pole of filter caps in output stage.
13. Change all 16 compensation caps in all output stages to better ones.
14. Damp certain power supply caps
15. Change metalized polyester caps on 3.3V power supply to DAC with modified polyprop caps.
16. Properly orient poly caps on output of regulators for output stage.
17. Change IV resistors to high quality ones.
18. Eliminate distortion producing parts (3 of them)
19. Remount output transistors in IV stages and bend them forward so they are no longer close to the power supply caps and put a very thin piece of cardboard between the transistors and caps to further reduce their temperature. The transistors in the stock LKS are too close to the caps and can cause them to burn up within a year if left on all the time. The very latest LKS DACs have the transistors mounted underneath the chassis to eliminate this problem. My solution works as well.
If you are not using the usb input then it will sound better if you either disconnect the power supply from the more expensive board or remove the board all together if you have the cheaper usb board.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/l-k...van-dammes-double-impact.840938/post-14480636
The most striking thing was to put wooden supports to the transformers and eliminate the fixings and the metal screw.
