[Ichinichi]

Anyone mod their WA6 yet? You know, wire swapping and the like? Tinkerers, what looks possible?

 

[jamato8]

Trying to stir up trouble?

Those red caps are the coupling caps and some V caps in .1 or .15 would be a real positive direction. Some nice Blackgates in the cathode bypass for the driver section of the tube, a Dact volume control and so on and so forth. . .

The parts seem pretty well balanced for the price. Once you do something to one section you have to balance another section so it isn't always just swapping out parts.

 

[Ichinichi]

WHOA.

Expand on that "so an and so forth". No hand-waving with me; DIY n00b here. Seriously, what's possible? Changing out ALL the parts for premiums so that the final product is just the same circuit!?

 

[cotdt]

you can upgrade the transformers if you can find equivalent ones that fit. or get some custom made.

 

[Ichinichi]

Think you could "hotrod" this badboy, cotdt?

 

[cotdt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ichinichi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Think you could "hotrod" this badboy, cotdt?

as Jamato mentioned, those red caps can definately be upgraded to teflons or PIO. they are rather small, so I'm sure you can do better. the other thing one can mod is the power supply section, personally i would use good SS recification but that would require changing the power transformers as well. but anyway, for sure you can swap out those red coupling caps. also the volume pot. alps blue not great.

 

[jamato8]

You wouldn't have to change the ps if you go to solid state but the voltage drop would be different and you would need to use a resistor to drop some voltage but I don't think SS is always better than a tube rectifier and I have used both quite a bit. In fact in many case I prefer good tube rectification to most any ss. Soft start up for the tube without a timer, as you would need for ss or just hit the tubes with voltage and current as a solid state does. You would have to go a long ways to beat a GZ34 metal base or even a good GZ34 or 32, 33 or 37. A DACT volume pot would be great if it would fit. I have used them and they are very good. Dead soft silver would be nice for the wiring. Output transformers are very special and have to be just right to really get the most out of the signal. Jack said he has these made up so they may be pretty good already and many OT's would be too big. One thing you can do is put a ultra fast soft recovery rectifier in front of the GZ34. The SS rectifier will do much of the work with the tube doing the final rectifier smoothing and it will last forever.

 

[johnsonad]

I like turning my on, letting it warm up and listening to it

All in all it sounds pretty darn good to me

Of course parts could always be better but does it really need it?

 

[jamato8]

I don't think so. It sounds good to me with everything well balanced. It has a good clean layout with good implementation. I one had a preamp that was very simple with very inexpensive parts by Stan Warren (right here in Eugene). It even had the worst posssible caps directly in the signal path, tantalums, but Stan knows how to implement and it was one of the cleanest and most transparent preamps I have heard.

 

[Stoney]

I'd stick with tube rectification; I've heard conversions to SS that have ruined the sound in the upper midrange, lower treble. It isn't just a power source, but an integral part of generating the sound quality.

I would be interested in mods, at least those blessed by Jack, having most experience with balancing the sound of this unit.