Yes that looks "right" to my eyes. Can you give us the exact details of the Nichi's, Solens and the film cap please? My Crack/SB kit arrived a few days ago, so early days for me, but I like to have ideas.
Forgive me if I chuckle a bit on the "right" part and only for my own sake - I'm just winging it, but it did come out well.
"Men" laws:
1) Bigger has to be better
2) More is always better
3) Adding "stuff" couldn't possibly cause a problem
4) there is no rule 5
6) Film beats Electrolytic (kinda like rock, paper, scissors, type of beat)
There are more but I think those are the three (read carefully - this is guy talk) that I adhered to on the tail end of this build.
The proper way of dealing with the electrolytic output caps would be to completely replace them with some mongo (remember Mongo? Knocked a horse out in Blazing Saddles?!) sized film caps that would make it near impossible to put the plate back in the base. I think Doc would say that the proper way would be to add the speedball and quit mucking things up. However, it is quite possible to double the cost of this headphone amp merely by the purchase of such beasts and that was not my intention. In this case a word foreign to me but occasionally referenced by my wife comes to mind...budget.
The stock output caps are 100uf, 65v, 85 degree caps - perfectly suited for the job at hand. Apply Rule 1 - I put in Nichicon PW 100uf, 450v, 105 degree caps - physically about 4 times the size of the originals. And I still did not feel complete.
So I threw in some Solen 1.5 uf film caps in parallel to the replacement caps (see rule #2 and add rule #6). I did keep within the voltage range - I think those were 600v caps
. This kept me from feeling guilty about not having film caps in the output. Based on those specs I believe the top plate will evaporate before any degradation of the replacement caps will occur.
The thought process behind carefully selecting these replacements had everything to do with what was left laying around after 10 years or so of changing "stuff".
In other threads (and on my own modified Crack) there are discussions on modding the power supply and one easy step is to add a film cap to the last electrolytic (and in some cases folks have applied rule #6 to the last electrolytic cap). What I added in there was a Dayton .01uf 400v cap left over from the Reduction build. See rule #3.
Bass definitely picked up - now, was that due to the speedball or my own carefully thought out and crafted advanced designs?
We may never know...
Side note: I had some "fuzz" (distortion?) on upper bass and some vocals - just barely noticeable. I pulled the tubes from my first Crack (ok...that' really doesn't sound right) and "fuzz" disappeared. I rolled tubes for 24 hours and as a last test put the originals back in - "fuzz" either gone or reduced to unhearable levels. Maybe break in time should be applied.
