I performed the above improvements to my last Dude plus a couple of others. I lugged this Dude into several other systems with preamps costing over $12,000 and highly, highly reviewed. The Dude just overwhelmed them in short order. The design of the Dude is just unbeatable and these improvements do nothing to change the design, they simply improve parts quality.
Anyone tried an Audio Magic Pulse Gen ZX in their TRL DUDE preamp?
There is plenty of room to put one in. I would imagine it would make the best points of the DUDE even better sounding and have no parts that sounded worse. I'm thinking of getting one to put in my DUDE. Any helpful comments would be appreciated.
Showing 3 responses by grannyring
Great idea and I would think it would actually reduce the noise floor. You have plenty of room. The best tweaks or upgrades you can perform in terms of sound quality however are these few: I know from experience as I have done many, many mods to Dudes over the years and learned. 1) replace the signal wire throughout the unit with the new Duelund stranded 16 gauge wire in oil impregnated cloth from Parts Connextion. Must do! This includes all the RCA input and output runs. http://www.partsconnexion.com/duelund-81514.html 2) Replace all the blue computer grade capacitors with Clarity TC film caps. This is the most important mod you can do. The improvement is spectacular. Contact me for more details. http://www.partsconnexion.com/capacitor_film_clarity_tc6.html 3) Make sure your output caps are high quality ones such as Duelund or Jupiter copper foil and .47uf to 1 uf. 4) Replace the wire in the high voltage B+ power supply with 14 gauge Neotech solid core copper in Teflon. Get this from sonic craft. http://www.soniccraft.com/product_info.php/neotech-solid-upocc-copper-in-teflon-18-awg-red-p-1580 5) Replace the common quality bridge rectifiers (2) with high quality ones from Parts http://www.partsconnexion.com/product4795.html 6) If you are good at DIY and soldering, then the last mod is replacing the resistors under the two 6sn7 tube stands with Talkman Rex or even better Audio Silver or Shinkoh. We can visit on this also. |