[kota1]

I bought my Taz approximately one year ago, I still remember the initial disappointment I had listening to the unit; In my opinion, it was worse than the Astell & Kern SE200 I had. To put it very simply, it was identical to the SE200 minus the fidelity. There was some saving grace though, if that was how it sounded when it was stock, it had reasonable potential after modifications. Besides, I've always liked a "vintage valve amplifier" sound (Warm?!), this is a great opportunity to personalise the Taz to my liking, here's what I did...
1. swapped 2 sets of resistors on the audio path to Allen Bradley carbon composite resistors
2. Replaced most capacitors on the audio path to Black Gates/ Audio Note standard (VERY OVERSHADOWED BY THE KAISEI SERIES!)
3. Replaced most capacitors on the power supply paths to Panasonic OSCONs
4. Replaced 3 headphone outputs to Western Electric wire
5. Covered most chips and audio relays with Mu-metal foil (an old trick from the books)
6. Applied Stabilant 22 (Tweak?!) to all audio connectors
7. Applied Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut to the 78xx voltage regulators
(Note: The upgrades at the back are useless cause they supply the display board only, my bad XP )

So what did all of that do? To put it simply, it's gone far beyond what the SE200 would ever achieve, The reason why I got the SE200 in the first place was because despite it sounding quite cool and "modern", it has a good balance throughout the frequency spectrum and is sounds reasonably organic. Back to the Taz... after modifications, the music sounds "full": full as in its warm, its got clarity and fidelity, the boominess and haze is gone, the music has a certain bite to it but non-agressive, but the most important part is that it has a soul now, it is not just high fidelity music I am listening to, it is the artist, their interpretation of their music and me, this is something that my SE200 never really achieved, I'm overjoyed to see how my Taz has come so far from where it began.
I see myself doing further improvements to the Taz though, I'm posting this as a Phase 1 upgrade, Phase 2 would mostly involve the transformers, audio and electrical. It'll be substantially more difficult because they involve measurements and circumstances beyond my control but I look forward to the challenges I will face

Thanks for posting this, nice pics and glad you dialed it in for your system. Are you using it as a DAC with the preouts into your main rig or primarily with headphones?
How much time and $ did it take to mod it? Thanks

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

Thanks for posting this, nice pics and glad you dialed it in for your system. Are you using it as a DAC with the preouts into your main rig or primarily with headphones?
How much time and $ did it take to mod it? Thanks

Hi kota1,
I'm using my Taz as a DAC + Headphone amp. As for now it's primarily used with my headphones, I'm not sure I'll be using it as a pure DAC in the future though because the emphasis of the TAZ is the headphone outputs, I could probably get something better in the future...
Anyway, the whole operation can be done within £300, the main costs being the Black Gate capacitors (greatly inflated prices) and the Mu-metal foil (you buy it as one huge piece). What you should note though is that this demands more time and skill than money. Sure you can just desolder the Fine Gold caps, slap a pair of good caps and call it a day but I believe this is not what most people want. However, the Taz's PCB is not something I love to deal with, partially because I deal with simpler electronic stuff such as my vintage tube amps which involves massive components compared to the smd stuff of the Taz, I also feel like the Taz's PCB is difficult to deal with in nature, I did some Chord Mojo mods back then and I never struggled with the mods, I did struggle with soldering the components properly with the Taz. PCB aside, the Taz is fairly compact which means that anything you want to add on would have size constraints, might be a huge problem if the amount of mods starts adding up.
It took a long time to do that many upgrades because it's not a one-off project but more akin to different phases of understanding and upgrades, all in all it was a whole year before I got to this point, but if I were to give you a ball-park estimate, it's approximately 20-30 working hours, I try to solder to NASA's workmanship standards so that's a greatly inflated number, if you were to deduct that part from the work hours I think it'll take 10-20 hours.
Hope this helps

 

[kota1]

Hi kota1,
I'm using my Taz as a DAC + Headphone amp. As for now it's primarily used with my headphones, I'm not sure I'll be using it as a pure DAC in the future though because the emphasis of the TAZ is the headphone outputs, I could probably get something better in the future...
Anyway, the whole operation can be done within £300, the main costs being the Black Gate capacitors (greatly inflated prices) and the Mu-metal foil (you buy it as one huge piece). What you should note though is that this demands more time and skill than money. Sure you can just desolder the Fine Gold caps, slap a pair of good caps and call it a day but I believe this is not what most people want. However, the Taz's PCB is not something I love to deal with, partially because I deal with simpler electronic stuff such as my vintage tube amps which involves massive components compared to the smd stuff of the Taz, I also feel like the Taz's PCB is difficult to deal with in nature, I did some Chord Mojo mods back then and I never struggled with the mods, I did struggle with soldering the components properly with the Taz. PCB aside, the Taz is fairly compact which means that anything you want to add on would have size constraints, might be a huge problem if the amount of mods starts adding up.
It took a long time to do that many upgrades because it's not a one-off project but more akin to different phases of understanding and upgrades, all in all it was a whole year before I got to this point, but if I were to give you a ball-park estimate, it's approximately 20-30 working hours, I try to solder to NASA's workmanship standards so that's a greatly inflated number, if you were to deduct that part from the work hours I think it'll take 10-20 hours.
Hope this helps

OK, that is good to know. I am using it 50/50 as a DAC and headphone amp. I like the DSD remastering engine and the DSEEHX features when streaming music.

 

[audionewbi]

I bought my Taz approximately one year ago, I still remember the initial disappointment I had listening to the unit; In my opinion, it was worse than the Astell & Kern SE200 I had. To put it very simply, it was identical to the SE200 minus the fidelity. There was some saving grace though, if that was how it sounded when it was stock, it had reasonable potential after modifications. Besides, I've always liked a "vintage valve amplifier" sound (Warm?!), this is a great opportunity to personalise the Taz to my liking, here's what I did...
1. swapped 2 sets of resistors on the audio path to Allen Bradley carbon composite resistors
2. Replaced most capacitors on the audio path to Black Gates/ Audio Note standard (VERY OVERSHADOWED BY THE KAISEI SERIES!)
3. Replaced most capacitors on the power supply paths to Panasonic OSCONs
4. Replaced 3 headphone outputs to Western Electric wire
5. Covered most chips and audio relays with Mu-metal foil (an old trick from the books)
6. Applied Stabilant 22 (Tweak?!) to all audio connectors
7. Applied Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut to the 78xx voltage regulators
(Note: The upgrades at the back are useless cause they supply the display board only, my bad XP )

So what did all of that do? To put it simply, it's gone far beyond what the SE200 would ever achieve, The reason why I got the SE200 in the first place was because despite it sounding quite cool and "modern", it has a good balance throughout the frequency spectrum and is sounds reasonably organic. Back to the Taz... after modifications, the music sounds "full": full as in its warm, its got clarity and fidelity, the boominess and haze is gone, the music has a certain bite to it but non-agressive, but the most important part is that it has a soul now, it is not just high fidelity music I am listening to, it is the artist, their interpretation of their music and me, this is something that my SE200 never really achieved, I'm overjoyed to see how my Taz has come so far from where it began.
I see myself doing further improvements to the Taz though, I'm posting this as a Phase 1 upgrade, Phase 2 would mostly involve the transformers, audio and electrical. It'll be substantially more difficult because they involve measurements and circumstances beyond my control but I look forward to the challenges I will face

@Whitigir you would be proud of this mod!

 

[Whitigir]

@Whitigir you would be proud of this mod!

I am glad to see more people starting to modify their TAZ. It is a device full of potentials.

 

[Whitigir]

I bought my Taz approximately one year ago, I still remember the initial disappointment I had listening to the unit; In my opinion, it was worse than the Astell & Kern SE200 I had. To put it very simply, it was identical to the SE200 minus the fidelity. There was some saving grace though, if that was how it sounded when it was stock, it had reasonable potential after modifications. Besides, I've always liked a "vintage valve amplifier" sound (Warm?!), this is a great opportunity to personalise the Taz to my liking, here's what I did...
1. swapped 2 sets of resistors on the audio path to Allen Bradley carbon composite resistors
2. Replaced most capacitors on the audio path to Black Gates/ Audio Note standard (VERY OVERSHADOWED BY THE KAISEI SERIES!)
3. Replaced most capacitors on the power supply paths to Panasonic OSCONs
4. Replaced 3 headphone outputs to Western Electric wire
5. Covered most chips and audio relays with Mu-metal foil (an old trick from the books)
6. Applied Stabilant 22 (Tweak?!) to all audio connectors
7. Applied Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut to the 78xx voltage regulators
(Note: The upgrades at the back are useless cause they supply the display board only, my bad XP )

So what did all of that do? To put it simply, it's gone far beyond what the SE200 would ever achieve, The reason why I got the SE200 in the first place was because despite it sounding quite cool and "modern", it has a good balance throughout the frequency spectrum and is sounds reasonably organic. Back to the Taz... after modifications, the music sounds "full": full as in its warm, its got clarity and fidelity, the boominess and haze is gone, the music has a certain bite to it but non-agressive, but the most important part is that it has a soul now, it is not just high fidelity music I am listening to, it is the artist, their interpretation of their music and me, this is something that my SE200 never really achieved, I'm overjoyed to see how my Taz has come so far from where it began.
I see myself doing further improvements to the Taz though, I'm posting this as a Phase 1 upgrade, Phase 2 would mostly involve the transformers, audio and electrical. It'll be substantially more difficult because they involve measurements and circumstances beyond my control but I look forward to the challenges I will face

Love them BlackGate, but I can’t find them anymore, authentic one anyways. I look forward to your next phase . It has been far too long that anyone wanted to lift a finger on the TAZ

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

I've done another minor modification since last time, anyone who uses the Taz's unbalanced outputs might wanna chime in too.
After consideration, it wouldn't make sense for me to upgrade the audio transformers because I won't benefit too much from using them (I'll just use balanced if I had to). I did notice that there is a 33 ohm resistor in the signal path and a 1M resistor to ground during the review and both of them were run-of-the-mill smd components so I got matched pairs of Allen Bradley carbon composite resistors as replacements.
It was a very difficult modification. As you can see in the pictures, I did not have the luxury of space (a recurring issue), what I decided to to then was to solder the resistors directly to the transformer terminals and figure out the rest along the way... What you see here is a 0.125W Allen Bradley compared to the SMD resistors so it's no joke to say that it way very difficult. I was lucky enough to find 2 probe spots to solder the ends of the 33 ohm resistors and I soldered the ends of the 1M resistors to 2 neighbouring 0.1uf caps to ground. Not the most aesthetically pleasing layout but it gets the job done.
Sound wise? Wow! I did this modification with hopes that this would be a "patch-up" mod ~ slightly perfecting what I already have, turns out that this mod is far more influential to the sound than I expected. Given that I only spent around £9 (£5 resistor matching fee), this is incredibly cost-effective.
I am currently testing the modification out with my Final Audio Piano Forte IX, they are incredible earphones but they never worked as well as I wanted with the Taz, they just sounded "on the edge"/harsh/modern(?!) but that completely misses out on the point of using them, they are supposed to be lush sounding with incredible mids. This modification did exactly that, it finally imposed that "tube sound" I always preferred onto my PFs.
What this means for you if you use unbalanced connections is that perhaps once you have done most mods on the signal path, you could look into tweaking these 2 resistors to something of your tastes, be it vintage resistors, Audio Note Tantalums, Duelund Resistors... this would be the finishing touch to the sound and its incredibly fulfilling!
The Taz can be quite confusing at times, why wouldn't they use Fine resistors here...

 

[kota1]

I am using the Taz primarily as a DAC in my 9.3.8 immersive home theater. I love being able connect so many sources to the TAZ. I have my Sony Blueray player which will play every format including DSD connected to an iFi purifier into the coax. Today I ran the optical cable from my HDMI audio extractor and was blown away at what a good streamer it was into the Taz. In general with a MCH setup you trade off a bit of two channel performance. Now I can have both!

 

[grabrom]

Hi guys, I'm posting this here before going to the classifieds... I have a Japanese Taz because I live in Japan for now, but will soon be moving back to Europe.

I don't really know much about electronic stuff and I thought that only a change to a 220v power unit would be enough to use my Taz in Europe. I contacted Sony to ask if they would change the power unit and they said they "can't turn a Japanese device into a European one".

is that really the case? Am I doomed to sell my Taz here and hope I can find one in Europe?
I'm so sad about the situation...!!!

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

 

[Whitigir]

Hi guys, I'm posting this here before going to the classifieds... I have a Japanese Taz because I live in Japan for now, but will soon be moving back to Europe.

I don't really know much about electronic stuff and I thought that only a change to a 220v power unit would be enough to use my Taz in Europe. I contacted Sony to ask if they would change the power unit and they said they "can't turn a Japanese device into a European one".

is that really the case? Am I doomed to sell my Taz here and hope I can find one in Europe?
I'm so sad about the situation...!!!

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

Could be changed but if only when you could buy the right transformer and have the right tech to work on it. I wager that the one who modified his unit above may be able to help you out @Vintageaudioholic

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

@grabrom , you have a few options regarding your situation:
1. Bring the Taz home and slap a variac/step up transformer in front of it. It'll work but don't expect anything more than that.
2. Get a Chinese R core transformer as a 1:1 swap
3. Go wild and get a beefy transformer of your choice and use it as an external transformer

Now, all of the options only work provided that you have some knowledge of electronics and are willing to mess around, none of the options are inherently difficult, they are just challenging in their own ways. Tell us more about what you yourself have in plan

 

[grabrom]

@Vintageaudioholic
Thanks for your answer.

As I said before I don't have much knowledge about electronics and wouldn't necessarily have time to learn and mess around, given the fact that something something family, and something something work already requires its fair share of learning and messing around.

From what I had read somewhere some time ago, a step up transformer would mess up the sound and I wouldn't want an amp I won't enjoy using.

I'd say that depending on the price and difficulty involved I could try messing around if I had very clear instructions. (My actual work involves quite minute type of actions so I don't believe hand skills would be a problem, it's more the knowledge part)
Or have someone do it.

Or... :/ as I said before sell mine here in Japan or to a mighty American person and just hope I would find another one in the old country

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

@grabromI I feel like the variac option sounds like your best shot, you can either get an isolating transformer which steps down the voltage (and I assume that's what you dislike?) or a variac that does the same job.
I understand why you'd hate the isolating transformer option because it does "mess with the sound", I did a small experiment and placed a 1:1 topaz isolating transformer wired to output balanced power, the background was dead quiet and "pitch black", the highs were extremely refined and the overall imaging was very refined too but the bass suffered a lot as a consequence and the overall experience wasn't enjoyable. Mind you that I'm using a 500VA transformer so it's far beyond what my Taz would ever need.
As for swapping the internal transformer, this is what you can be expecting... the last 2 photos if you want a 1:1 r core swap and the 1st one with cables if you decide to use a beefy external transformer... The R core one isn't too painful because you're literally just putting 2 connectors on a transformer (that fits) and the other one was a pain in the behind.
And yes this came from a failed experiment I did... 2 toasted capacitors XD
On a personal note, I've observed how a lot of seniors who use vintage gear tend to use variacs for their vintage 110v gear, and upon listening to their gear it seems that the impact of a variac is actually very tolerable, so maybe you should test the variac option in Japan FIRST, set the variac to output 1:1 and see how you like the sound, if you still dislike it then look into other options

 

[grabrom]

@Vintageaudioholic

Thank you for your detailed response.
Good idea I will try with a variac first and see what I think! Again, quite neophyte about these things... anything I should look out for when choosing one? Any suggestion?

Also checking your pictures, changing the internal transformer is incredibly doable. Damn I don't get why Sony won't do it for me.

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

@grabrom
As long as the variac is electrically sound, you're good to go! Just enjoy the experimentations and pls don't electrocute yourself

"Money" ~Mr Krabs.