I must say this thread is very quiet today.

Still no news of T-amps arrival, xtorm ?

I was looking at the specification sheet of T-amp and noted those capacitors with size 805 are actually insulators which could be replaced with Capacitor dielectrics proper. Prices of each Wima polypropylene caps are RM1.66 / RM2.05 for 0.1uF 63V and RM2.84 / RM3.56 for 0.47uF 63V at RS Components. The smaller value of 100pF and 1000pF could probably be left undisturbed for the time being. I'm ordering those 0.1uF and 0.47uF caps just like xtorm.

Are C15 / C14 input caps and C18 / C19 psu caps ? The T-amp only prescribed 180uF 25V for psu caps?

xtorm, would you be able to source for Auricaps 2.2uF input caps ?




This post has been edited by Y.C.: Aug 27 2008, 08:58 PM

OK, I will order 2 sets of 7 pcs x 0.1uF plus 6 pcs x 0.47uF tomorrow. We go for the cheaper price ones ya? Difference between them is cheaper ones able to withstand heat up to 85C whereas the more expensive ones up to 105C, latter caps more suited for tube amp environment.

I read that Audiophiler caps are actually made by Mundorf and are very good. If you could source for Auricap caps at not too expensive prices, them I'd prefer to go for them, else I'll consider buying your Audiophiler caps. Err, you sourced them from PRC? Any possibility they turned out to be imitations?

I got these from page 6 of the pdf file you made available at your first posting (TA2024 Eval Board Revision: B - Bill Of Materials). Down there quoted 7 pcs of 0.1uF caps at position marked C6,C7,C16,C20,C26,C29,C30 and 6 pcs of 0.47uF caps at position marked C12,C13,C22,C25,C27,C28.

I just checked Farnell site, price there for same items slightly cheaper. And these are are Polyester caps of MKS2 / MKS4 and not Polypropylene caps so you decide whether you still want them or not.

RS (0.1uF) - webpage

RS (0.47uF) - webpage

Farnell (0.47uF) - http://my.farnell.com/jsp/search/browse.js...requestid=68689

jazzy,
Ya, going to hit the sack shortly. Got too carried away with the T-amp and cap replacements which are not too expensive from RM1.66 - RM3.51 each. Would you like to join us in our order?

xtorm, polyesther and not polypropylene. I myself was also tricked by RS, check this out again: Wima 0.47uF 63V capacitors. The description of the first item is polypropylene nut when you select it, it's actually a polyesther. By the way, Wima got polypropylene caps at 0.47uF value ?

jazzy, all this thought and present action to replace the SMDs was after reading this site all on TA2024 amps. Check it out if you've yet to read it: mardis I thought it was interesting.

Problem is, I never heard of Epcos until now whereas all these while I have been reading about Wima caps. The same goes with Auricap yellow caps which is highly raved by many diyers and hifi nuts.

Will double confirm with you again tomorrow before I key in my order online, now too tired already after a long day at work. Need to double confirm with Jazzy who is also keen.

Do check out the mardis site I pointed out to Jazzy in my previous posting. All the recommended mods are stated in Input Mods and New Super T

Good night.

This post has been edited by Y.C.: Aug 28 2008, 01:47 AM

Nice work, ongbs.

xtorm and jazzy,

I re-looked at prices of capacitors dielectric at RS Compo and Farnell again and I sort of decided to go for Vishay BC Components 2222370 series (Belgium made) instead of Wima MKS2 (Germany made) because of price factor. Just Vishay caps are much cheaper and made in PRC.

As I don’t have any knowledge how Vishay polyester caps would sound, I goggled for some general idea and found this: "…… as observed with Mundorf caps before, Vishay poly caps have a sense of weight and texture behind the notes, especially in the midrange that keeps music interesting and captivating over longer-term listening. …"

Are both of you comfortable with my choice ? Costs / person =
- 0.1uF 63V 10% capacitance tolerance, 1.17 x 10 = RM11.70
(qty ordered to be multiple of 10, so each of us need to take 10)
- 0.47uF 63V 10% capacitance tolerance, 2.64 x 20 / 3 = RM16.20 (6pcs) / RM18.30 (7pcs)

Total of RM27.90 / RM30.00 per person, tentative delivery time by next Thursday as Farnell stocks are in UK. Agreeable by all ?


Jazzy,

I PMed you and xtorm prices of Wima MKS2 today. xtorm claimed he didn’t receive the 1st time; if you did kindly ignore them as the 0.1uF caps are with capacitance tolerance of 20% and as for 0.47uF caps from RS Compo, we need to wait between 5 - 8 working days for stocks to arrive from UK too and both the prices have yet to factor in the extra pcs we need to absorb due to qty ordered in multiple of 5.


xtorm,

ok, I’ll see you later today. I found Vishay BC Components 20K ohm resistors at Farnell at RM0.42 each so you need not bring the Multicomp resistors along with you.

jazzy,

Will do that. Actually I'm replacing all resistors specified with Vishay BC Components at a total cost of RM14.38.

Good night all.

xtorm,

Hehe, RM30 because I'm not even after 1 sen of profit and since 3 of us pool, we could divide qty (multiple of 5) between us.

We only need 7 pcs 0f 0.1uF caps but the item is sold in multiple of 10, so if we take 20, one of us is short of 1, how?
Hey, wait a minute, did I make a mistake? Now I see it's in multiple of 5 here: capacitors, so our costs even lower now as we need to buy 25 pcs and divide by 3 (29.25 / 3) = RM9.38 (8 pcs) / RM10.49 (9 pcs) thereabout.

Yes, the 20k ohm Vishay BC Components Metal Film resistors are with tight tolerance of +/- 1% See here: resistors.
You want me to include 12 pcs into our order for you?


jazzy,

Could I find out from you name of shop to pick up your smps?

jazzy,

Could I find out name of that particular shop from you?

It's alright, jazzy. I'd be going down town during my lunch break and was thinking of getting one in JP afterwards since I'm also getting my T-amps from xtorm later today. Just would need to walk into more shops and hager price with each of them. Hey, I thought you just got them yesterday?

BTW, I already PMed you details of our order of Vishay BC caps/resistors with Farnell.

Jazzy,

This afternoon was too rush; ran a few errants nearby my office area and it's already too late to go KL, so going down to JP tomorrow instead. Xtorm told me you indicated the shop is near Nixie and he asked me to be on a lookout for a young and skinny Chinese girl and that's the shop.

Picked up my T-amps from xtorm this afternoon. Wow, the actual board is so small ya; don't know whether it got enough space for us to fit in those caps and resistors we ordered or not? And not forgetting the extreme care we need to exercise with the soldering iron.

Thanks for concern.

---

Added on August 29, 2008, 6:29 pmongbs, hehe, scared others steal your kungfu ler ?

This post has been edited by Y.C.: Aug 29 2008, 06:31 PM

Y.C. is initial of my real name but it's not Yam Char. The last time you asked me same, I thought you were inviting me to yam char together.

Hahaha, I think it's more of symptom of my age slowly catching up with eyes straining to focus on close objects and hands not rock steady like my younger days. Naked, semi naked model or dead stuff, same sahaja lah!

I thought those smps which come with our notebooks are neater looking and could be hidden behind cabinets, will check them out tomorrow too. Would the sound quality of our T-amps through these smps be more inferior than through the unit Jazzy bought? Anyone?



This post has been edited by Y.C.: Aug 29 2008, 07:08 PM

Thanks, Jazzy.

Yes, the little marvel looks much bigger in pictures and considering this small little fella to reproduce fine sounding music, it's quite unbelievable. I thought the soldering job was a 'lil rough and not refined but for RM55, I guess it's no issue here.

Talking about soldering iron, I'll need one too as my made-in-China elchepo soldering iron was last used 5/6 years ago and it's now full of rust. Will buy a finer tip soldering iron just like you.

Haha, thanks ongbs, as people usually say, "don't want to admit ownself old already also cannot".

I'll be on the lookout for one, and hope to be lucky.


When I was in Eunos, One-U last weekend, I saw one 'pistol-shaped' soldering iron with a fine tip selling for only RM19.90 and was contemplating buying it. Wow, RM55 is definitely much much above my budget considering I use it very little.

Thanks again.

Nice talking to you too, xtorm.

No issue here with the shop with a young girl, I'll romp the whole of JP tomorrow.

Hmm, you definitely need a much better soldering iron than me, because you use it more than me. Don't be a cheapskate like me!

Hi all, my most humble apology for my ‘disappearance’ during the long weekend. I was in town but just unable to go online and post comments on T-amp at LYN forum. Reason being my notebook PC infested with spywares since Friday night and whenever I went online, I’d be unable to open the relevant page of websites I wanted to as the spywares would immediately take over and start sending out (instead of receiving) huge packets of bytes (info). I’ll need to take care of this before further postings.

Traffic into the city on last Saturday was bad with massive jam everywhere; reached JP at 16.30 and managed to buy a 12VDC 2.5A computer-styled SMPS plus other some tools and items I needed but missed out picking up a DC socket (as I wanted a round shaped unit), so failed to listen to my T-amp. I will hunt for one these 1 – 2 days’ time and in the meanwhile only worked with my too thick Rosewood casing.

Vishay BC 0.1uF 63V and 0.47uF poly caps arrived from Farnell S’pore today, now only awaiting for Vishay BC 20k ohm 1% metal film resistors from Newark, New York over the next couple of days before I could hand them to Xtorm and Jazzy. I managed to picked up some Vishay BC 2.2uF 63V 10% tolerance polypropylene caps, got 3 pcs extra to spare as I only need 2, anyone? PM or sms me.

Probably this is already stale news but here’s my own experience with the T-amp kit:

I helped my colleague (one of the guys I managed to poison) to solder an el-cheapo RM3.00 volume potentiometer to the T-amp using JP’s 40sen per metre multistrands wire and plugged it into and bypassing the built-in amp of a JVC UX-5000 midi compo in my office.

When the sound comes about after ridding off some initial hums, viola, it sang so well. I had never heard my JVC midi to sound so complete before – the clarity, details, tone of instruments, macro dynamics, decay, the emotion factor, PRaT and not forgetting the bass I am now hearing through the 3” paper-cone speakers are awesome. I was also able to notice the recording of a particular CD was made from aged master tape, yes, the T-amp is that transparent! And all these from a RM55 kit amp? Hard to believe but it’s definitely true. So much so, when we finally took out the T-amp from the JVC midi, it was rendered not listenable anymore – blur by comparison.

The day proceeded with both guys I poisoned calling /sms-ing me at my mobile even at wee hours of the night. Boy, both are badly poisoned and excited by the unbelievable sound they are getting from their T-amps.

A finding by my friend (the other guy poisoned by me) – he has been following comments made by forumers of this thread and he experimented with some input caps himself before finally settled for my extra pieces of made-in-Portugal Vishay 2.2uF 63V polypropylene caps. He noticed that the slight pop sound to loudspeakers after changing input caps are still there even with these caps and thought perhaps the offending small caps which came standard with the T-amp kit are more to discharge off the extra charge stored in the caps and so to take care of pop sound rather than to enhance the sound quality. He felt with Vishay 2.2uF, the highs are more apparent, sweeter-sounding and more ‘flesh’ to vocals. Hmmm, ……

As for my own T-amp, I shall be fixing a 24-steps 50K ohm discreet attenuator to it and commence work after office today after having double-confirmed the input/output soldering points to it. And at rate things are progressing, I reckon I will spend my entire weekend with my T-amp.

This post has been edited by Y.C.: Sep 5 2008, 01:30 PM

Thanks for the compliments, bros.

I’m not selling anything here wor but was probably spreading the love of a superb-sounding amp to a colleague and friend who together with me happened to be on lookout for inexpensive amps. Good things are meant to be shared, perhaps xtorm should take me ‘yum char’ for promoting the T-amp kit.

I’ve not tried out the Vishay 2.2uF polypropylene caps myself and my brief account of it was quoting what my friend actually told me and I share with all. The prices I wanted to sell and finally let go were below what I actually paid for. If there is any order from RS Compo/Farnell by another forumer, my friend is keen to pick up just one more lone cap (as he took 3 off me).