Sonic Frontiers Line1 SE upgrade?

Hello, you can expect only minimal increase in sound quality, but nothing like the price of this upgrade would suggest. No matter how good this upgrade is, you still have the power supply and delicate input stages in the SAME box. If you really like SF gear, sell your line 1 for around 1K, and with what you would usually spend for a Line 1 upgrade, get a Line 2 with better than the stock tubes. I much better investment...

Hi Cosmic, I had this upgrade performed on my line one about 2 months ago. The biggest difference to my ears has been that the unit seems much more dynamic now. Surprisingly, the top end seems slightly rolled off though. I would have thought the opposite because of the silver cable that was installed. This may be a characteristic of the tubes that came with my upgrade which are Brimar's. After my listening session last night I decided to install my Mullards again. Later in the day I will listen to those tubes and see what happens to the top end. All in all I am happy with the upgrade but YMMV.

Don't know if this upgrade can still be made since there has been a change in ownership of Sonic Frontiers. The new ownership does not care for tube equipments.

Um, Coop you're wrong, Sonic Frontiers no longer produces new tube equipment but they still perform upgrades as well as handle maintenance and service issues for their tube gear. Paradigm bought out SFI in the late 90's and decided to cease production of the tube gear but they continue to produce "Anthem", which was Sonic Frontiers "lower end" company. You are also mistaken in another thread that you responded to about Outlaw audio. They do not build their products in New Hampshire. More likely being built in China.

Thanks for the responses folks. Gsselling, I'm interested to hear your opinion with your Mullards in. I contacted Anthem/Paradigm a while back and they said they would provide the upgrade until they ran out of stock to do so. They also had it discounted fairly significantly a while ago. Parts Connexion also performs what they call a SE+ upgrade. It gives new caps and resistors plus internal wiring and gold plated tube sockets and some silicon. Chris Johnson who's the president of Parts Connexion was one of the principals at Sonic Frontiers. According to him their SE+ upgrade is supposed to be better than the SE upgrade because of the availability of superior parts that weren't available back when SFI started offering the SE upgrade. I believe the cost is $550 USD + tubes if you choose to add some different tubes. I myself am just looking for some air and transparency. Increased dynamics would be an added bonus. Still curious if anyone else has any thoughts or observations on this topic.