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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Re: I recently overhauled/modded 2 Powervar units posted by Duster on February 1, 2004 at 20:10:33:
After cleaning the contacts on the recepticle and powercord of the Powervar I inserted one into my system. Plugged it straight into the wall outlet. Tried just the pre-amp. Tried just the DAC, just the transport, Chang Lightspeed 6400. In my system with what I tried above (a total of about 40 mins of experimenting), the stock Powervar plain killed the dynamics and micro detail. A few minutes of that in all of the above mentioned experimenting I pulled it out of the system. I almost canned the whole idea of modifying the Powervars. As an FYI, all of my gear is made by Madrigal Audio Labs, mostly Proceed.Anyways, as I mentioned in the previous post, top shelf of a Atacama XL Pro rack, then a clone Symposium Super platform, then chrome plated brass cones.
About the Powervars... Both units are identical. They are both 3-5 years in age (just off lease, I purchased them off of the leasing company). They look like they have an old school type transformer, not torodial. The Powervars are the old style metal casing with a metal face, the new ones I believe have a plastic face. Inside the units are one transformer, two PI filters, one resister, one small cap, a master switch and one recepticle.
THE MODS: I made one unit a master unit, one a slave unit.
MASTER UNIT MODS:
* Removed the stock powercord and installed a Furutech FI-10(R) Rhodium-plated IEC Inlet.
* 8' VH Audio cyroed Flavor 1 (shielded) powercord.
* Treated all connections with ProGold G5.
* Replaced outlet with cryoed 5262AI receptacle.
* Replaced all screws with non-magnetic stainless steel screws and washers. Used rubber washers where I could.
* Desoldered all connections to the PCB (except PI filters) and resoldered (used less solder, much cleaner) with Kester solder. The solder was globbed on before.
* Aside from the leads from the transformer, replaced all wire with 4N soft annealed silver solid core (22ga. solid core was used, 6 strands in seperate teflon tubes tightly twisted, then heat shrunk in Polyolefin= 14.27 ga. aggragate).
* Two Auricap .47 uF 600V caps in parallel on the cryoed 5262AI receptacle.
* Second Furutech FI-10(R) Rhodium-plated IEC inlet was installed to power the slave unit. Power comes directly from the main inlet noted above. Same silver wire used.
* Stillpoints ERS covering 75% of the underside (above transformer) of the cover and sides (each side of transformer) of the cover. The edges of the ERS are protected from conductivity.
* Replaced spade lug at switch and soldered the silver wire at the switch post.
* Black plastic plate to cover recepticle. To keep dust entering the unit to a minimum.
* All ground contacts to chasis with gold plated minimal spade lugs.
* Triple checked for any possibilty of shorts, all wires spaced apart as much as possible.
* Would of lifted and dampened the transformer but could not get the main bolt that holds it to the chasis off. I think that bolt is epoxied in place.
SLAVE UNIT MODS:
Same as the main unit with the following exceptions:
* Instead of silver wiring, I used gold alloy (gold/silver/copper mix with a heavy hard plate of 24K gold, once again 14.27 ga. aggragate). The reason I did this, is for power applications IME of experimenting with the wire it works very well for audio. Gold alloy tends to give more of a smoothish sweet sound compared to silver for power applications. I guestimated that some of my gear would prefer the gold wiring.
* 2.5' VH Audio cyroed Flavor 1 umbilical power cord hard wired to the unit. Has a cyroed IEC plug at the end to plug into the main unit for power.
There you have it. I kid you not though, the performance after the modifications is night and day compared to before. I have had them plugged in for about two weeks now, little by little (I have not been listening to my system much lately, just a few hours since the Powervars have been modded) they are improving. I still have a few PCs I want to try with them and combinations with the Chang 6400. I guestimate that with time and some burn-in of the recepticles, Furutech IEC, Auricaps, PCs, and new wire that these modded Powervars will be extremely nice.
cdc
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Follow Ups
- Here is how I modded the Powervars - cdc 22:50:00 02/01/04 (0)
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