Eddie Current Super 7

I don't think anyone is surprised that @Luckbad is going into overdrive with tube swapping hehehe.

You know he won't stop so soon so may i suggest a friendly vest?



Don't ever change Luck.

 

I don't actually enjoy tube rolling. What I try to do is find reliable, available, bang-for-the-buck tubes for every tube amp I get that I actually like. Once I do, I buy a bunch and stick with them then avoid tube rolling for the most part.

With the Garage1217 Project Sunrise/Horizon, I tried dozens of tubes until I settled on 6N6P and EH 12BH7. Obtainable, inexpensive, incredibly reliable.

With the ampsandsound Mogwai, it was 6P3S-E for power, 6N9S Melz or Sylvania 6SL7 for input. The Melz tubes are little less reliable and obtainable than I'd prefer, so the ubiquitous Sylvania became my backup (in standard or 7F7 form).

With the MHDT Labs Orchid (and other MHDT DACs), I only keep 3 tubes around: 6N26P, 6N3P-DR, and GE 5670 Triple Mica. I really like Western Electric JW 2C51 and Tesla 6CC42 pinched waist tubes as well, but they're too expensive and too rare.

With the Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 MKII, I rolled a bit but settled pretty quickly on 6N23P-EV. Easy to find if you aren't after the "super" version of this tube. I liked getting Cryoset versions of this tube. Not because I think cryo improves the sound, but because I've always received very reliable tubes from there.

The Super 7 is the most difficult amp I've ever had to do this with because the combinations are virtually infinite. I'd like to have a different tube type for each pair. It doesn't have to be a different manufacturer, but different construction.

It seems like my options are Sylvania and RCA. Everything else seems to be too expensive, too rare, or too unreliable.

If I'm able to find a good source for 7N7 tubes, I'll use those for 6 of the sockets and only roll the driver tube. I do have a few variants of 7N7 already and they seem to be very reliable and inexpensive, just not particularly available. One pair with circular mica, one with rectangular mica, one tall bottle... that's probably the goal. If I can find a couple reliable pairs of each of those, I'll sell the rest of my 6SN7s save for a few individual tubes for driver rolling.

Then I'll get to capacitor and transformer investigation. I really only plan to try two cap configurations at this time (both Jantzen Superior-Z as one, Audyn True Copper and motor run caps as another combo.

Yes, I'm a little crazy, but there is a method to my madness.

 

Makes me twitchy (and not in a good way) just thinking about this.

 

I'm executing Plan B with the Super 7 right now with regard to tubes. I found a decent number of 7N7 tubes that test well from a trusted source and have them incoming.

The plan is to use 7N7 tubes in the 6 ouput sockets and to only roll the driver. If that doesn't quite work out, I'll get an additional new production EH 6SN7 so I can pair the new production Tung-Sol or EH tubes with 7N7 for a little bit more variety. Possibly later on I'll grab a pair of PSVANE or something.

Tired of rolling the dice when I shouldn't be spending money on tubes.

Though DeOxit on the pins of some of the tubes that seemed noisy at first did clean them up, I had already decided to throw in the towel.

I'll list most of my 6SN7 tube pairs shortly.

 

Plan B looks like it's going to work. I acquired 20x 7n7 tubes--including 10 tall bottles--and cleaned them all up. Every single one sounds clean as a whistle. No crackling, static, etc. Really happy about these tubes! The tall bottle 7N7s in particular are outstanding.

I also found a cool National Union labeled tall bottle with smoked glass. I haven't seen another one of them in all of my 7N7 searching.

I only have two 7N7 -> 6SN7 adapters at the moment but I have more coming.

 

Can I call this the Eddie Current Super 7N7 now?

 

Decided to open up the Super 7 to get the lay of the land and install some Vampire RCA connectors.

Too many images to upload here, so here they are in a completely unorganized gallery for the curious: https://imgur.com/a/qFXgJ

 

I've been doing a lot of pondering with regard to what caps I want to try out first with the Super 7.

I'm going to initially go for a combination of bang for the buck and simplicity. While I want to try out some of those huge motor run capacitors at some point, it just seems unwieldy and might be the source of overheating issues some folks have (my stock unit never comes close to overheating, even if left on all day).

The current plan that I haven't quite pulled the trigger on (mostly because I won't have time to do the install until next month) is:

• 0.1uf Jantzen Superior Z-Cap: These seem to be a nice neutral go-to type of capacitor. I really like them in the MHDT Labs Orchid on output capacitor duty and they're affordable at this capacitance.
• 10uf Mundorf MCap EVO Aluminum Oil: These seem to be a good bringer of detail without breaking the bank or doing much wrong. I'll probably solder the leads on the rear of the board and get a little creative with mounting to keep them secure, but they'll be up top rather than locked down on the bottom of the chassis.

Really loving the Super 7 still. The only reason I'm going to modify it further (all I've done so far is Vampire RCA outs) is to try to extract as much as I can out of it, and to satisfy my need to tweak.

Later on--probably in the December timeframe--I plan to pick up some CineMag transformers as well. I spoke with Craig (Eddie Current) and David (CineMag) and it looks like there is a part that should be the exact same footprint: CM-13111. This core wound with a single 4500 ohm primary, and single 8 ohm output would be ideal. They're not cheap, which is the main reason to wait.

I'm at more than a month in with the S7 (longer than most of my gear lasts, if you know me) and I'm still astonished at how good this amplifier is. Thank you @Hands for the recommendation and @JoeDoe for tipping me off on the listing.

It's my favorite amp I've had the pleasure to listen to at a reasonable price point. The only amplifier I currently lust after is an early version of the DNA Stellaris @Donald North brought to a mini-meet a year or two back, and it's well beyond the price range that my wife would be comfortable with.

The combination of the Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 MKII SE+, Eddie Current Super 7, and Sennheiser HD650 is absolutely heavenly. I've been enjoying violin music more than ever before with the combo. I've generally either found violin too incisive (almost all oversampling DACs or crappy [often solid state] amps) or too soft (almost all non-oversampling DACs or crappy [usually tube] amps). This combination has made me really appreciate the violin's expressiveness and emotion without ever cringing at the treble or becoming bored with the timbre.

I shouldn't close without thanking the likes of @atomicbob, @johnjen, and @Torq (retired from SBAF permanently maybe unless we sent him his favorite flowers in a few months) for espousing the PRT (phase reversal trick) that I now have hardwired to my HD650 cable.

And @Marvey for being the first Changstar pirate (along with he who shall not be named) to recommend the Super 7. I remember reading that thread when I was still in noobville rocking an Electric Avenues PA2V2, Objective2, or some other sub-$200 solid state piece of kit.

And I'd like to thank the Academy, God, my wife and son, my parents, and everyone who has supported me through the creation of this film. George, Steven, Joss, and all of the grips and gaffers who made this possible... Okay, I'm stopping now. Love, Ryan.

 

Coming to theaters near you this holiday season...

 

Part of what's preventing me from getting a motor run capacitor is that I don't know which one is the exact cap you guys use. If I can find the exact same one, I'll probably grab it.

 

I decided to go with my first gut instinct and grabbed relatively inexpensive capacitors (and I couldn't quite find the right motor run caps anyway, so I went with these as my first shot). Total cost was a little north of $50 for all 4 capacitors.

• 0.1uf Jantzen Superior Z-Cap
• 10uf Mundorf MCap EVO Aluminum Oil

Far too early for proper impressions (other than "It works and still sounds great!"), and I probably won't have any worthwhile thoughts for a couple of weeks. The process took longer than it should have because I installed the MCaps last night to know what I was hearing, then did the Jantzens today.

My impressions of working on the Super 7: WTF, those holes on the PCB are tiny. I didn't want to drill out the holes to make them larger and risk damaging the board, so I did the creative work on the capacitor side.

I ended up appropriating some of my favorite (somewhat expensive) wire that I use for guitar pedals to connect the Mundorfs. The Mundorfs are MacGyvered in place for the moment with a little bit of physics and a lotta bit of electrical tape. I wanted to keep the wire run fairly short without hitting a transformer or choke. The leads are slipped into Teflon insulation and I used heatshrink where the leads connect to the wire. I kept them up at the top of chassis to keep them out of the way of any hum-inducing transformer nastiness. If I end up loving them, I'll come up with a permanent solution.

The Jantzens also had thicker leads than the board can handle, and they were too wide to fit cleanly on the same side of the PCB as everything else. I carefully clipped the ends of the leads down enough to feed through the holes on the PCB. I bent the leads and installed them on the reverse of the PCB, hanging a bit off the edge (and later pushed up a bit more because they were up against the transformers). Again, physics and electrical tape came into play, but it wasn't terribly necessary in this case (I could have just dangled them off the board, I just didn't want to).

Anyway, feast your eyes on this rather ugly temporary solution (this is the top of the S7 and is upside down when installed in the chassis):



EDIT: We'll see what happens with burn-in, but I'm not expecting dramatic changes. The Mundorfs are incredible for detail. Compared to the stock Nichicons (10uF VR series), clarity, detail, separation, and soundstage are all improved without getting harsh sounding at all. Bass and treble extension are both improved. However, bass slam is reduced, and that's exactly not what I was looking for.

The Jantzen Superior-Z (0.1uF) didn't change much about the tone compared to the stock Solens, but everything got slightly better while remaining very neutral. I really like these capacitors a lot and they'll probably stay where they are.

When I have the spare cash, I'll probably get some 10uF Jantzen Superior-Z caps. I know I'll be able to cleanly get those strapped up to the top of the chassis and I suspect I'll like them.

 

When your wife gets comfortable with the price of the DNA Stellaris and mine gets comfortable with your multi-modded Super 7, we should talk. Next year I figure we will both get the amp itch at some point based on a statistical analysis of our recent purchasing behavior.

 

Yes. Just keep modding, make it sound the best it can!

 

Strictly for @Luckbad 's benefit, of course...

 

Absolutely for his benefit ......at least for now.

 

There is a dibs list half a mile long for this amp already, even before I modded anything in it.

I'll be out of town for a bit and won't be able to properly judge the amp with the new caps.

I edited my previous post with a couple of first impressions. Things seem a little better today after doubling the wire gauge to the Mundorfs. Maybe the wires I used before couldn't quite handle as much as they give (fancy guitar pedal wiring, but it's pretty small gauge individually). Also added some hot glue to the wire connection points on the PCB because I like overkill.