W4S STP-SE DIY mods


Greetings,

I've got my STP-SE inhouse and researching my upgrade mods. I understand both Underwood and W4S sell mods as a service but I would like to keep costs down and exercise my soldering iron.

Does anyone have specifics on values/locations for updating the volume ladder resistors, diodes, and inductors that would be awesome.  

I believe I have details around the PS caps, voltage regs and opamp chips. 

Anyone have specific recommendations for parts to swap vs leave as is? Any specific pitfalls or gotchas I should be aware of?

Thanks much,



vfrpilot

Another thing I would mention here is that I am making a big assumption that those green Nichicon Muse bipolar are being used for DC blocking signal caps (why else would you use a bipolar?). If he is actually using these for power supply filters, then Elna Silmic is not the best choice. The best I found is the normal Nichicon Muse (UKZ) series. If you do this, better make damn sure you put them in the correct polarity (put in an electrolytic reverse polarity will probably blow the cap pretty quickly). Might have to use a multimeter to determine which pins are positive/negative.

Also, I don’t know if you have looked at this, but you can also upgrade the voltage regulators (unless they are already upgraded). I have used the Sparkos discrete regulators in several applications and they are just excellent. Much faster and smoother than monolithic 78xx/79xx regulators and they also shield noise from main power supply better. I have not tested the Dexa regulators, but the Dexa are much taller and I never had the space to place them. The Sparkos are same physical size as the monolithic 78xx/79xx, but a bit thicker. The Dexa uses a NE5534 op amp for error correction. The Sparkos uses a discrete Class A circuit based on their own discrete op amps.

Oh, make sure you get the "BRZ" version of the AD797 because it has better sound quality and measurements than the "ARZ" version.
"One theory would be that you mixed it up and there is only one input buffer with two output buffers. The one input buffer would only be used to create the "inverted" balanced signal when a single-ended RCA input is used. Then it goes to the discrete FET stage, which should be fully balanced/differential. Then there are two output buffers for both the normal and inverted signals of the XLR connection."

So upgrading the input buffer would only improve the sound of the RCA inputs and have no affect on the balanced input signals?