My friend and I installed the Magnequest All Nickel BH-5 OPTs and BH-7 Plate Chokes into my Paramount 300Bs on Sunday. Actually, my friend did 99% of the work and I was there mostly for "moral support". We needed new sets of wires to go from the OPTs to the binding posts, so my 1% contribution was cutting those wires out of some solid-core silver speaker wire that I had leftover.
When de-soldering the connections from the stock transformers, my friend used that copper ribbon to soak up the old solder. That's the first time I have seen that and it works great (probably old hat to most of you). We knew the second amp would take less time than the first, but surprisingly it was LESS THAN HALF the time.
As PJ states above, the new transformers fit right in. The BH-7 chokes have a black dot on the left side. We assumed that's where the black wire should go and it's the same side where the black wire went to on the stock plate choke. Please tell me we got that right (what would happen if it were wrong)? BTW, the BH-5 OPTs that I received only have two output taps. It looks like they are labeled 9(?) and 16 ohms. We used the 9 ohm tap for my 8-ohm speakers.
Given that we only were 99% sure we got everything right, I made sure to turn on only one amp at first. No smoke, no fire, no noise, so I turned on the second amp. We started up the CD Player and there was music, so we got it right the first time. I'm not that familiar with my friends system, so I couldn't make any sound quality judgments at that point. However, it sounded good. If I had to use one word to describe the sound, it would be "smooth". My friend uses a 211 stereo integrated amp with all Tango transformers which he inherited from his father-in-law who is Japanese. The Paramounts were definitely in the same class/category.
I have been listening to the upgraded Paramounts in my own system for the last couple of days. Two changes come to mind. There seems to be better overall definition. This is hard to quantify because I'm basing this on memory and it was already excellent to begin with, but that's the word I kept coming back to. Also, there's a change to the high frequencies. I believe PJ mentioned this in thread that got moved over. I can't tell if they are more extended or just higher in level.
I was a little concerned about this when listening to the first recording that I played, which happened to have a lot of high frequency content. Then I switched to some of my old standby evaluation recordings and realized everything is fine. As my system has gotten better (example: silver interconnects and speaker cables), I have lowered the cap value I use on my tweeters. I have fine-tuned it to what sounds best to me and I'm currently using .47uF caps. I may want to try lowering that again, but other than that, so far so good with the transformer upgrade.
Gerry
