July 14, 200916 yr I have been thinking about parting with my Melos SHA-1 for a while. It was [url=http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/617/]Corey Greenberg Edited July 14, 200916 yr by dsavitsk
July 14, 200916 yr My Melos has been down for a bit, and I've been considering whether to DIY upgrade or just get it fixed or both. This is much appreciated! Lot's of good work, pictures, details A+++++ Thanks for sharing.
July 14, 200916 yr Flashbacks. No, seriously, nice detail there, will have to print out and read later.
July 14, 200916 yr yup, I'm a big fan of the regulator with pass device type arrangement for high voltage duty as well, seems to cure lots of little problems, as you've shown above.
July 14, 200916 yr Wow, there sure is a lot of extra room in the chassis for all the new parts you put in on the mod. Great work!
July 15, 200916 yr Author Thanks. It's a tough call as to how much work to do on one of these. Certainly, one could use all V-Caps and Blackgate NXes, build some super duper fancy regulator, rework the solid state power supply, etc. But, the circuit has inherent limitations, and I tried to stay within them and not let this get out of hand. Though, those 2u caps may get replaced with something a little better.
July 16, 200916 yr Author the insides are a lot smaller than I imagined. Is that a European board design? I don't think it adheres to any standards. They basically drew it with a sharpie and used jumpers and bits of wire to connect things -- you should see under the board. In your PSUD2 sim, did you use a stepped load to check for ringing? Yeah -- I think it is a 2mA jump.
August 5, 200916 yr Author Not one to leave well enough alone, I thought I'd tinker a little more. The obvious next thing to do was to swap out the last PS cap. I had used a Blackgate Std, but these aren't my favorite caps, and I figured a film cap would be better. To that end, I removed the Blackgate and added a big Motor Run film cap. These are just big polypropylene caps dipped in oil of some sort. This improved clarity a little, but unfortunately it also lost some bass. The usual solution to not enough bass is bigger caps. So, I got a bigger cap.
August 14, 200916 yr Very cool build Doug! Now if only we could compare notes did you just swap parts, or did you also ensure the part changes didn't cause instability? Looks from Doug's analysis that this requires more care than the typical "modder" is willing to take...
August 14, 200916 yr Author Just swapping parts is probably OK. I ran into issues when I tried to put a choke in the PS and it started oscillating. I could have just left it out, but I think the benefits of a choke are sufficient that I was interested in getting to the bottom of what was oscillating. This led to the PS rebuild and regulator replacement. My sense is that this does more good than just swapping caps -- better to get a circuit right in the first place than to add the band-aid of audiophile boutique parts. It is less expensive in terms of parts, though it is probably more expensive in terms of time. And, I happened to have the little PCBs around.
August 21, 200916 yr The inside of the Melos sure is funky looking (stock). Doug, you're one of those people who is just plain cool. Nice work, and much more fun than just selling it off.
December 16, 200916 yr Hello Dsavitsk, Surfing the net and found out a beauty work you done on your melos sha1. Nice work!! Since my melos sha1 is not working and required for the repair work and totally love the way you mod. Could you please send me the details of components you added at the front? Actually my previous maintenance guy messed up my sha1 and that makes me come up to search a schematic of it and finally got you guys on hand whose know what is it. Last but not least, May I know any of you guys got schematic of this? I'm in Hong Kong and everyone refuse to do a repair for me if I can't find a schematic. Cheers, George Po
December 16, 200916 yr Hello Dsavitsk, Surfing the net and found out a beauty work you done on your melos sha1. Nice work!! Since my melos sha1 is not working and required for the repair work and totally love the way you mod. Could you please send me the details of components you added at the front? Actually my previous maintenance guy messed up my sha1 and that makes me come up to search a schematic of it and finally got you guys on hand whose know what is it. Last but not least, May I know any of you guys got schematic of this? I'm in Hong Kong and everyone refuse to do a repair for me if I can't find a schematic. Cheers, George Po Use PM's .
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