There are people that do upgrade their internal components, but not every piece of gear has point to point wiring that could be upgraded. It's a lot easier to play with interconnects, power cords, and speakers cables than it is to get into the internals of a component. Black Ice has options for upgrading the internal wiring in some of their products. I was able to upgrade the op amps in my DAC because they were plug-and-play. |
@vanson1 seek out the more DIY audio forums on the web… there are a few… put the gear you seek to modify along with “ modify” in your search engine…. its sort of like here, favorite fuses are replaced with favorite capacitor, etc… waxing hyperbolic… some deserved, some creating tanking circuits…. but hey, it’s the Web… |
My tech suggested upgrading the wiring on my 15 year old preamp (2nd owner). I was only expecting cap replacement. I sent him my Audio Note DAC and asked him to upgrade it to current model spec. He added Tantalum resistors, Kaisei and Rubycon caps to the existing Black Gates and AN oil filled Mylar coupling caps. |
I first explored replacing internal wiring in Ed Long Sonex MkII Time Alignment speakers waaaaaay back in the late 1970s. At that time they were already older speakers, meaning the internal wiring was not on the hifi radar. I replaced it with Wire World's first gen internal wiring, and painted the insides with many coats of boro-silicate. Due to the tall cabinet, I horizontally inserted a long threaded rod to alter any resonance, and finished the job hanging some wool over the rod. Well worth it These days, unless you own tube gear there isn’t a lot to be changed, but I found Oppo 105 wire upgrades on EBaye. First, I replaced the OEM IEC with a Furutec long silver tail to connect to the OEM power supply board, fuse jumper, and 110/220 switch. The improvement was not subtle, so I replaced the OEM PS with an aftermarket LPM to excellent results, though eventually I did get a active preamp My Emerald Physics 3.4 speakers have outboard XOs and came with cheap jumper wire. I ordered WireWorlds newest internal wire but it took a couple weeks to get it. As soon as I made the swap, my first thought was this speaker could have easily sold for an extra $1-2,000 I think DHLabs sells bulk wire hth |
My b&w speakers crossovers and all wiring were removed and discarded, I bought a Troels Gravenson upgrade kit from Jantzen and built new ones myself with having zero experience, I couldn't be happier. He has enough information that you can't go wrong. I'm not ready to tackle other gear other than a speaker though. |
I've rewired every single inch of internal wiring on Klipschorns, also spec'd silver litz and diy modded in some Duelund internal wiring on my custom build 300B monoblocks. My 845 SET and pre have no wiring to replace.
Obviously, I've determined internal wiring at least as important as ic, power, all external wiring. DIY capability makes it doable for me. Sending off to tech would be obstacle for me so understand those who haven't done. |
Sure, you can change out parts and wires to upgrade a component, but, this is a process that involves listening to the results and perhaps back-tracking. The process involves "tuning" and "voicing" to fit your particular taste and to complement other components in the system. Any meaningful change in the sound resulting from a component change has the chance of improving or degrading the sound. It is not simply the case that a more expensive part, or one with a good reputation, will necessarily improve the particular system. A local dealer that builds his own custom gear under his own brand name once had me listen to one of his amps. I am quite familiar with his amps, so I was expecting to hear something quite nice. I was reluctant, but, I ultimately told him that this particular amp sounded like crap. He smiled and explained that a customer sent it to another company that "upgrades" components and it was fitted with things like Blackgate coupling capacitors and fancy resistors; the customer was so unhappy with the sound that he was having the upgrades undone, which is why it was back at the dealer's shop. One should approach this sort of upgrading as an experiment, and one should keep an open mind about the results. I see too many threads on these forums about things like tweaks that seem to always improve the sound--if they work, they change the sound, so how can the change always be an improvement? I suspect that at least some of the improvement is really expectation bias. |
Why do so many* make such ignorant assumptions? I've been upgrading caps in signal paths, modding/improving power supplies, and using Teflon insulated/oxygen-free wire w/ferrite beads (when appropriate), for myself, as well as numerous customers, since the early Eighties. Same silly song as those that assume: no one but they are aware of the necessity of room/acoustic treatments, prior to making system tweaks. *The AudiogoN WOKE?
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No doubt modding is steep learning curve. One has to limit change to one variable at a time, experience and/or research into particular parts sound qualities critical.
Listen, determine what you don't like about present sound, change out what you think is offending part with the chosen new part. Certainly, there is chance new part may not be to your liking, in which case you try another. I've had to go through this exact procedure any number of times over twenty year of modding. With experience these mistakes become much less common.
My present dac and custom built 300B monoblocks both use silver wired transformers. |
Sure. Everything matters, so why wouldn’t upgrading internal cables. But, you’re messing with the voicing the original designer intended and that works with the drivers he’s using and the crossover he deigned using the existing wires. Cables are so situation specific, I’d think your about as likely to degrade the sound as improve it unless you have the blessing of the designer. |
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I have been upgrading what most companies ignore,out of site,out of mind most companies use at best average Xover parts the Xover is the. ♥️ or the 🧠 of the speaker it most cases even with great drivers a weak link I look fir gems or speakers say 5+ years old and rebuild them I just spend $1500 on all the Xover parts for a beautiful pair of Dynaudio Contour 3.4LE parts quality average like Solen and ceramic resistors ,I use top Either Mundorfs great new Ultra copper foil resistor ,or the close second Path audio from Poland $30 each vs the $2 in your speaker, and rewire I bought high quality Cardas wiring Occ copper and WBT connectors , this$1500 spent will turn a $7 k speaker into a $15k+ With ease, a profound improvement ,it’s Xover is actually a bottle neck for most stock speakers .after 20 years I have literally mega 1000s of hours in comparing and listening. Buy a custom built speaker, Tony Gee of Humble homemade hifi capacitor test makes great speakers for all budgets check out the capacitor test it covers 95% it pretty accurate , |
@vanson1 In my opinion, you could not be further from the truth in your statement thet "there is much more to be gained there". And there is certainly a lot of low hanging fruit to be had to this end especially if you have some basic mechanical skills. It's not that hard. (seems like you already may know this). All my amps have direct wired DH labs silver copper AC all the way to the fuse block. I use mil spec ptfe insulated silver tinned copper inside and honor the wire gauge of the original design. My experience is with 1980's 1990's vintage high end gear and have had amazing results along with mods based on long standing consensus in the DIY community as to the efficacy. Just be forewarned, opening the cover can lead to a deep rabbit hole. @larryi I appreciate your direct experience with a certain mod, but those that mod either for themselves or for business would stop doing it or be out of business if it was not highly effective..... Peace
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Wires, unless they are corroded or burnt, do not get 'old' and do not need replacement. Semiconductors do not need changing unless burnt. Resistors are about the same. Leave them alone unless burnt. About the only thing worth changing are the capacitors, especially electrolytics. If you have them, another type of component also worth changing are relays and mechanical switches. Their contacts do oxidize and changing them may be a good idea. If you have surface mount components, this whole thing becomes a difficult task.
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I design and build Amplifiers and Preamps (you might call them head amps). The choices of specific wires in the units are based on the task they are to perform, the amount of current they must carry, and their locations in the individual unit. I do this aware that every signal is actually using two wires for each signal. In a speaker box these are easy to see. In a chassis product it is not necessarily so obvious. I fight a constant problem, it is called the GROUND where all or some of the signals may employ the same path for what is referred to as the Return. In most cases the left and right channels share the Ground in which case the one signal line of the right and left channels 'commingle' in a common connector which is why I prefer balanced circuitry. In my writings I have borrowed the term 'entanglement' from the QFT world to describe the possible interactions usually manifest themselves as 'space' or soundscape qualities. Over 60 years of experience with audio hardware design and modification has given me an intuition as to the nature of these interactions and have become my 'secret sauce' for Superior Product Performance. It is the 'gestalt' of the wiring and not necessary the wire itself that is the key. Wiring is a holistic event, not a singular and individual one. As to 'Moding' a product I frequently get request from people who still use products I first came out with (I formed the Quintessence Group in the late 1960s) on how to upgrade. After 50+ years of operation there is never a question about replacing all electrolytic caps but that's about it (we always used quality caps for signal and frequency shaping so that is not an issue for QGroup product). When asked about wiring I point our that all the wiring is already fine strand Teflon coated wiring but that what ever your beliefs and driving mythology are, don't change it unless you are deeply practiced in the job of quantity soldering and you profoundly understand what is going on in the other half of the signal, the return wiring. Do remember that the key to lowering the distortion in the old Crown DC300 amps was pushing the wiring around,, everything counts in the end. In the end, the damage done by replacing something old with something new is frequently the enemy. As reminder of is consider that 40 year old solder has a flux in and about it that does not exist today and is not usually compatible with present day solder flux. Even though you clean up well, you are beginning a new microscopic chemical interaction which may sneak up in a couple of years and bite you in the butt. It goes well beyond that simple illustration but the point is that changing any single element of a system changes the system as a whole. Are you experience and wise enough to understand what that really means? Good luck, Barry Thornton, Austin Audioworks
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Seems to be almost as many opinions as listeners… To name a few tweaks: I’ve rewired speakers to include adding banana jacks to one pair. I’ve replaced DIN jacks -> gold plated RCAs on a mid 80s Meridian. A little later upgraded the wiring for the same. The latest is tri-amping HT LR towers* bi-amping the Center channel - both originally passive. NO regrets |
