DIY Audio pot pourri 1 : Spica TC50 crossover tweak

During several months I've carried out many small audio tweaks. Not full blown projects though but I think it's maybe quite interesting sharing them :).

First is my Spica crossover tweak, continuing effort IMO still necessary to replace those old ECI lytics. This time I like to tackle the high frequency section. On September 2002 the Spica designer John Bau was interviewed by  Enjoy the Music.com and asked what to do to improve his Spica, one of his answer is to change all the electrolytic caps to Film.

So here are the pics, some caps, made some 'risers' for easy soldering and quick caps change.

first on the board are Wima MKC 4.7uF, Green Nichicon Muse's 10+22uF, Black Nichicon BP-S 4.7uF. Left them for 3 days about 12 hours on play, sound? me not like :). So instead of waiting for another 3 days I just pick - place - listen - change. An advantage of working with broken - in and old caps...

 

The Wima MKC can stay, it sounds well for coupling capacitor on my CDP-M75, so next on the board is 0.1uF K42y Paper in oil bypassed the BP-S, still not liked it, then I went to my garage pick some big 22uF Solen MKP - the last pair I have, this in parallel with poor small 10uF green Nichicon Muse, sit and listen...man!..the bass is like I never heard out of this Spica..I wonder though..I'm working here in the high freq region and I get that bass?..well the Solen and the Wima stays!.

Now the job is much easier, that what I've thought and I was wrong. I got better bass & high, same and maybe better staging, but some tracks still give sibilance. Swapping the BP-S to Evox MMK did not help, same with 'old' Yellow Rubycon.

The last 4.7uF film cap I have is a pair of el-cheapo yellow Audiophiler..yuck.., nonetheless I've soldered them and ...its sounds ok, no, they sounds quite well indeed..and  totally acceptable to me, much better than the Evox.. So the Audiophiler stays! After 2 months listening I tend to let this setup freezed and change the 10uF Muse to MKP and maybe another Wima MKC replacing the Audiophiler, I miss the high notes timbre of acoustic piano sometime. 

My lessons here, tweaking the sound for Mid is very difficult, many times proven cheap parts perform well in combination with other. Thanks again for reading guys..

In the pipeline : 

-Part 2 :  film cap gets woody jacket..

-Tubelover 6N1P tube buffer in depth..