I read a post somewhere where you recently planned to quiet down the Paramours a bit.
Did you ever do this, and can you elaborate?

What Stoetkit did you build that smokes the Paramours?

Mark

I was thinking about doing some noise reduction on my Paramours, but changed my mind. It wouldn't be hard to do though. The power supply is very basic, so there is a lot of easy improvements you can make. The most obvious are to increase capacitance and to damp the diode switching spikes. Put 0.022uF caps across the diodes, maybe swap diodes to a fast switching type. Replace the electrolytics with larger values, possibly go to a premium brand and maybe add an LC stage with a nice big choke.

For info on the Stoetkit, see the FSAudio forum.

Here is a list of posts from a search query there: http://www.AudioRoundTable.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?forum=FSAudio?query=Stoetkit

Wayne

Several questions:

1) I don't understand how to measure the noise on my Paramours. I use the AC portion of my VOM, and hook the black lead to a ground (like T14), and the red lead to what??? And, what should I be seeing? What kind of reading is too much, etc. This is to be done with the Paramour powered up and the RCA jack shorted out?

2) Also, some clarification of the "...0.022 mF caps across the diodes". Now, I'm not sure what you mean by "across".
Do you mean for each of the two diodes a cap should attach to the ends of each diode? Or, do you mean a 0.022 cap will jump from one diode to the other. Sorry that I don't understand this basic concept. Not your writing. My inexperience.

3) As for going with larger value caps in the power supply section. How much larger? When you do this, does it change the B+ value the audio section sees? Same thing when you add a choke? How do you select the value for the choke?

I know, I know...start calculating, right? (E, I, and R)
That's what I was afraid you were going to say...

Thanks,
Mark

I see now. Thanks for the lesson. I always note a lot of guys fiddling around replacing filter caps with larger ones, and wondered if it would affect the B+ and they would also have to re-calculate what resistors were in the filter. Now I know using the larger caps will not affect the B+.

This next question probably will affect it, but maybe insignificantly. What if one added another stage to the filter? After the last cap, say a cap with the same value, rating, etc. which would be preceded by a small value, but appropriate wattage resistor?

I know I have some 220mF caps that I scrapped out of a computer(Foreplay uses this value), but I'm not sure about the Paramours. I'll have to look when I get home.

Actually, my B+ runs a tad high as I recall.

Thanks again for the lesson and link! Very interesting.

Mark

Ohms law is pretty simple stuff:

E = I · R

I = E / R

R = E / I

Where E is volts, I is amps and R is ohms.