Best improvement to an amplifier

[Carlman]

What's the best improvement you've made to your amp?  Turning on the power button?  Spraying it with WD-40, or lifting it with 100 mighty vacuum cleaners to achieve isolation? 

Just curious... The biggest improvement I've made was improving the isolaion of the RCA connectors from the chassis.

-C

[Black Sand Cable]

What a silly question.....

Adding an after market power cord did it for me! 

[richidoo]

Changing tubes has made the biggest differences. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.... With my current amps, I like the stock tubes the best. I wish I knew that before trying so many other flavors. Nervosa got me on that one...

Yup the black Sands silver reference Mk V power cables made a nice improvement too. But they hate any filtering.

Herbies dampers on the splitter/gain tube also made a small but noticeable improvement, depending on how microphonic that tube is. Yeah, I swap that one a lot too. Stock is back in there now.   

I would like to try some form of vibe isolation too, maybe Maple stands, and floor bracing.

[Bunky]

Replacing the coupling caps in my VK60 with .22uf V-cap teflons 

[lonewolfny42]

What a silly question.....

Adding an after market power cord did it for me! 

....And me too John.....that Silver Reference works great with the Butler amps....

[djbnh]

#1) Dedicated circuits.

#2) Walker SST / PC upgrade.

edit: see #1

[JBryan]

Adding a dedicated circuit

[djbnh]

Adding a dedicated circuit

Man, I completely forgot about the dedicated circuits - that upgrade supercedes what I earlier wrote; I'll have to correct my initial post. Thanks for the reminder, JBryan! 

[Bigfish8]

What a silly question.....

Adding an after market power cord did it for me! 

"Ditto," so far! 

I replaced the stock PCs supplied with the Mono SEs with Black Sand Silver MKVs.  There was a definite improvement is sound and to be certain I later reinstalled the stock cords.  Lets say they did not stay in long before the Black Sands went back in to stay.   

Ken

[mgalusha]

Hmm... I fall into camp of "improvement" meaning to change something inside the amp.

Kinda depends on the amp.

I built a pair of Transcendent SC-150 150W push pull tube amps about 5 years ago. One day I swapped out the Auricap coupling caps for some Jensen PIO bypassed with a Sonicap Platinum and also changed the cap in the feedback loop from ceramic to a polystyrene. The difference was shocking (and easy to check since they were mono amps).

Until recently I had a pair of Odyssey Extreme Mono's. I decided to change the power supply design. IMO the improvement was substantial. Again I could compare to stock, so it was easy to verify. For those who are brave, I changed the PS from being just a capacitor filtered design to a C-R-C-R-C. According to the Duncan Amps PSU simulator this reduced the ripple by about 10x (20dB). The resulting amp was subjectively very clean and detailed. I also added some Soncap bypass caps to the input coupling caps and the feedback circuit.

I've tinkered with other amps but those two were the most noticeable improvements.

[rollo]

Replacing the coupling caps in my VK60 with .22uf V-cap teflons 

  The V-caps did it for me. Tube rolling as well. A quality powercord is a MUST for any Amp IMO.


charles

[denjo]

Buying a new and better amp!! 

Seriously, power cords (like John's excellent range of Black Sand cables) and interconnects.

Best Regards
Dennis

[ipy]

Installing a Oyaide SWO-XXX

[Carlman]

Installing a Oyaide SWO-XXX

Sweet! I bought those for all my gear... Can't wait to hear them in action!

[ipy]

Installing a Oyaide SWO-XXX

Sweet! I bought those for all my gear... Can't wait to hear them in action!

Great but they do need some hours (100+) to break in to sound best.  I have recently installed their R1 for my source gear as well.  Planning to compare the two when the R1 breaks in.