Paramour 1 upgrade

[puicheng]

Got a pair of Paramour 1 (Hammond PT) from a friend. Love it. Want to upgrade the irons with the Iron Upgrade Kit for S.E.X. Kit 2.0. I noticed some owners also bought the C4S. Is this also a good upgrade option? What's its purpose and which version should I get? Thanks.

[Paul Joppa]

Do you not already have the C4S driver? Only the very earliest Paramours came without it, and many of them were upgraded as soon as the kit came out.

Perhaps you could post a photo of the underside of the chassis to help us know exactly what you have?

[Paul Birkeland]

Got a pair of Paramour 1 (Hammond PT) from a friend. Love it. Want to upgrade the irons with the Iron Upgrade Kit for S.E.X. Kit 2.0.

This is not 100% straightforward, but it's totally doable.  I'll attach the photos that I took the one time I did this.

[puicheng]

Here's the photo.

Thanks.

Clifford Cheng

[Paul Joppa]

Wow! That really is a pristine first-run Paramour! Beautiful construction, too.

PB is The Man when it comes to these upgrades, but we can fix you up one way or another.

Dang, that takes me back. That was my first design for Bottlehead; I hadn't even retired yet.

[puicheng]

What should be my next step? Sorry it's been very hard to post to this forum.

[Paul Birkeland]

You could do the iron upgrade or install C4S boards. 

A SEX 3.0 upgrade kit can be cut in half with tin snips and some resistor values changed to put into your amps. 

The SEX iron upgrade package would be the other item.   

I can help you here with installing either one.

[puicheng]

Thanks Paul. Can I do both? If not I prefer upgrading the irons. Is Iron Upgrade Kit for S.E.X. Kit 2.0 what I should be getting?

[Paul Birkeland]

I would do both, but please only do one at a time, as it's so much easier to debug things that way!

Yes, SEX 2.0 iron upgrade is what you want to go for.  The instructions will give you secondary wiring instructions, but you'll need to wire for one impedance higher than what you're using.  So if you have 8 ohm speakers, wire the OTs for 16 ohms, etc.

[puicheng]

I see. Shall upgrade the irons first but I'll go ahead and order both anyway. The Paramour is currently driving a pair of KEF LS50 (8 ohm).

[puicheng]

Ordered. Shall let you know once the parts arrive. Thanks.

[puicheng]

Hi Paul. Parts finally arrived.

[Paul Birkeland]

You'll need to buy a pair of tin snips, then cut the board in half right between the two solder pads at B-A/B.

[puicheng]

Cut into two pieces.

[Paul Birkeland]

You can stuff those boards with all the parts from the SEX C4S upgrade kit.  You will need a 1.5K cathode resistor for each amp. 

In one Paramour, send the green twisted pair of wires to pins 4 and 9 on the 9 pin socket.  Wire the 1.5K resistor from pin 3 to ground.  Signal in from the RCA jack goes to pin 2.  Output of the C4S (the "O" terminal) goes to pin 1.  Pin 1 also leaves and feeds the coupling cap.  The "I" tab on the C4S board needs to be fed by B+ (ask if you aren't sure where that is) and G goes to ground.

In the other Paramour, send the green twisted pair of wires to pins 5 and 9 on the 9 pin socket.  Wire the 1.5K resistor from pin 8 to ground.  Wire the incoming signal from the RCA jack to pin 6.  Wire the "O" from the C4S to pin 6.  Pin 6 also leaves and feeds the coupling cap.  The "I" tab on the C4S board needs to be fed by B+ (ask if you aren't sure where that is) and G goes to ground.

Voltage on 3/8 should be about 3V.  Voltage on 1/6 should be about 180V.