Crazy Bill the Eel Killer
|
Hello Sam, thought I should post this in the forum for others to see.
Since my SE84CSEX is in pieces in the garage, and I never have enough time to rebuild it, I've been looking for a used Zen to hold me over until I get the Decware rebuilt and my 2A3 project finished. I struck paydirt a couple of weeks back, as I was able to purchase a 2002 vintage SE84CS from Parts Connexion for $ 399.00. It came with a flame maple base and a few decent tubes.
I immediately put the vintage Rusky tube set that I used before I took the CSEX apart ( maybe 6-7 yrs ago. ). A black plate Rusky 5U4G ( early sixties ), late 70's 6N1P14-EB, and the 73's vintage 6N1P-V1. I also used to use a SLN specced cryoed 6N23P-EV that I swapped w/ the 6N1P as the mood struck me. Can't find em right now, but I will eventually.
It made beautiful music and I'm trying to find as much time as I can to spin some vinyl.
Well no grandkids today, so when the wifey heads off to work I take the SE84CS to the garage to do some work. Here was the plan.
Since I have read all of the noise about the CCE mod, I wanted to compare the 6P15 varieties to the EL84 with the CCE mod. So the plan was this.
First, I was going to leave the present WIMA coupling cap in place, but rewire it to act as the CCE cap. Since I have a pr. of the Jupiter copper foil caps here that Steve uses, they were going in. So I took the bottom plate off and got ready to do the mods.
Then I saw the little black 0.1 uf caps installed between pins 3 and 6 on the output tube sockets. Someone had already done the CCE mod on this baby. So I closed it back up and took it to the house to compare the two tube types.
First put the 6P14P-EV in a for a couple of minutes and listened to a Cohen track I know very well. Sounded phenomenal.
Changed tubes to the 6P1P15-EV and played the same track.
Not much to say except I was stunned. When I first read Steve's description of how good this mod is, I was of course skeptical that it could be that profound of a change. I'm not anymore. No more EL84 types in this amp for me.
Cheers, Crazy Bill
|