SEX AMP 2.0 Upgraded Iron

[John EH]

I realize I'm a couple years late to the game here but I just put the Iron Upgrade in my SEX 2.0.  Took a couple hours, Instructions pretty straightforward.

Not sure it matters as I may be the last guy doing it in the free world but I have an errata or two for the manual

- The manual should say to completely remove the twisted pair wiring from 4 and 5 on the choke to A2 and T11 and B2 and T31.  It just says to cut them off the choke, not to remove the twisted pair. 

I finished mine and was doing a post install inspection and saw those 4 wires sticking up.  D'oh.

- And the manual doesn't say to roll up and heat shrink the black wires left over from the choke but the kit does give you heat shrink to do just this.

I'm giving it a listen now.  I have the OT2's configured at 8 ohms. I'm liking it but I want some break in time.

This never stops being fun.

[John EH]

Ok it is official.  I'm liking this.  Right out of the chute it sounded great on the speakers but I couldn't decide when hooked to my Sony MDR-V6 headphones.  After about an hour things are sounding tight on the cans and even better on the speakers.

Tell you the truth the improvement on the cans I'd say is 10% but on speakers I'd say it is 25%.  Wonder why that would be but WOW!

[corndog71]

Good to hear.  I've been thinking about getting these.

[John EH]

Good to hear.  I've been thinking about getting these.

I don't see how you could go wrong.  It's a solid upgrade in my opinion.  Man oh man though the SEX amp is a tank now.  Heavy metal.

If you put it in I have one more recommendation.  On the power supply side add the wire to the choke on terminal 5 (to 25U) before you install the choke.  I was able to get it in there but boy was it tight to solder.  Also it's really close to the power supply diodes.  I moved a diode slightly and bent terminal 5 up just a hair to give what I thought was sufficient clearance.

Anyway life is easier if you put the wire on the choke first.

John

[Grainger49]

   .  .  .    On the power supply side add the wire to the choke on terminal 5 (to 25U) before you install the choke.  I was able to get it in there but boy was it tight to solder.  .  .  .   

When building my Paramours there were some terminals that were really tight on the first one.  The terminals have a triangular, pie shaped, hole in them.  I have a Dremel tool with diamond tipped router.  I made the holes wider before assembling the second one.  It was a lot easier.

Unfortunately you need to know the tight terminals before assembly.

[John EH]

   .  .  .    On the power supply side add the wire to the choke on terminal 5 (to 25U) before you install the choke.  I was able to get it in there but boy was it tight to solder.  .  .  .   

When building my Paramours there were some terminals that were really tight on the first one.  The terminals have a triangular, pie shaped, hole in them.  I have a Dremel tool with diamond tipped router.  I made the holes wider before assembling the second one.  It was a lot easier.

Unfortunately you need to know the tight terminals before assembly.

Remember the first foreplay 2?  It had one terminal that had about 400,000 bare copper wires that went through one hole.  Heck they were hard enough to solder one much less a whole bunch of them.  That was fun.  Foreplay 2 is awesome though. I still have one and I swear it sounds better with my Paramours than the Ext Foreplay 3 does.

[Grainger49]

And I remember it well.  The horribly overloaded terminal (or was it a tube pin?) was a ground.  I had read complaints about it and realized  as I built mine I could just use the bare copper wire that snaked around the sockets as a ground buss.  The tube pin had two connections, one on the bare lead on one of those connections.  All other connections were wrapped tightly around the bare grounding wire and soldered.

A quick picture:

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi244.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fgg7%2FGrainger49%2FBottlehead%2520Equipment%2FFPclose2_zps59d52d54.jpg&hash=e6486a81e21dde0c54f79a17b8d0fb69913d701a)

[John EH]

Very cool.  From a sonic level I loved that lacquered bare copper wiring.  I always thought if wires did make a sonic difference that the solid copper wire was best.  But from an artisan standpoint that stuff was a bear to solder.   And I fancy myself a darn good solderer.   Even when you figured out the trick to soldering it it was a lengthy prep. 

I loved it though and was kind of sorry to see them gravitate away from it.  I think it was worth the trouble.

[2wo]

I still have some of that, good wire but a bitch to strip that varnish off...John

[John EH]

I still have some of that, good wire but a bitch to strip that varnish off...John

I think what I did was to get one of those real tiny propane torches and just burn the varnish off.  It worked like a champ and real fast but boy would the heat conduct down the wire fast.

Scraping didn't really work and you could melt it off with a soldering iron but that took time and usually didn't make for a really pretty end.  That torch worked wonders though.

Loved that wire though. Looked cool, sounded great.

[2wo]

I made a mini solder pot out of a fired 45 cal and wired it to the element of my stove so it wouldn't tip over. worked great...John 

[mcandmar]

I made a mini solder pot out of a fired 45 cal and wired it to the element of my stove so it wouldn't tip over. worked great...John

I like your style

[Natural Sound]

I found that sand paper or emery cloth works well to remove the enamel from copper wire.

[Jim R.]

Another thing about that wire wwas that it was single crystal -- OCC is the term in vogue these days-- so between that and the very minmalistic dielectric, is what I think is   what brought the sonic goodies.

-- Jim