Pardon my slowness in responding, I haven't been on the internet as much for the last few days.
My question at this point - does anyone know of some other places where replacing the resistors might possibly be beneficial? Aside from the Sweetest Whispers, as you all might have noticed I've left those stock for now.
I thank all of you for the kind words. Now I'll address some of the individual comments and questions:
Lovely job Mr. Lin, I really enjoy seeing all the boutique parts in your build. I've been tempted by those beautiful red Jantzen caps (they got a good write up on Humble Homemade HiFi), but so far I've just played it safe and went with Obbligatos / Mundorfs or Ampohms, all of which I have gotten good results with. As PJ stated, people avoid the carbon comps due to noise and drifting which takes place over the years. Carbon films, especially the Kiwames, can get close to that "sweet warmth" of carbon comps without the issues mentioned. I can be a good idea to figure out if a resistor is in the signal path before you replace it, as boutique parts are not cheap and you want to maximize your investment, but the shotgun approach works too
Do you plan on any additional upgrades? Perhaps a stepped attenuator or a choke in the power supply?
Sometime down the line I would like to try one of the more significant types of upgrades. Right now I don't know much about the area of upgrading to better stepped attenuators, but I will get to it, and I don't know anything at all about putting a choke in the power supply.
I'm doing what's described and pictured in this thread since I can't afford anything much more expensive at the moment, and for me it's a lot of fun. I'm confident people on this forum are very empathetic about that last part! And although I'll probably be saying this a lot on the Bottlehead forum - I sure am glad I bought the kits years ago when I was able to afford them, even though I'm only now using them.
I will suggest tantalum resistors if one is looking for the best sonics in the signal path.
I'm trying those too, one example obviously being the Shinkoh ones in those last pictures, with which I've replaced the Kiwames.
I've seen those green Kiwame resistors pop up in various discussions, and I've eyeballed them as a possibility for when I upgrade my gear. It sounds like the warnings about increased thermal/shot noise don't quite hold true (the manufacturer even claims that these are quieter than metal films, though I would be skeptical of such a claim). However, I wonder about excessive warmth or a "veiling" of the sound. Metal films are supposed to be more transparent. To the OP (Mr. Lin): the Kiwames were swapped out of your amp. Any strong feelings about them?
Tantalums seem like the ideal choice, but they are rather expensive....
Well I'd like to be able to tell you I have much of a valid opinion on the results I may or may not have gotten with the Kiwames (that almost sounds like a statement made with the oversight of a lawyer...), but since there's a significant amount of time between removing the old resistors and installing the new, and also because I didn't use them for long to see if I noticed things over a longer period of time (like a week or two), I can't. Like I said, I thought the sound got a little sweeter and warmer, but I could have been fooling myself. I'm also not sure if where I put them is a place in the circuit where one would ever be likely to hear possible changes between resistors.
As for the tantalums being expensive - yes relatively speaking they certainly are, but I placed one order for everything seen here all at once (and more than what's in this thread that I haven't used yet either), so adding a couple $3-$4.00 resistors to the tab wasn't a big deal. And many brands/models were less expensive, a lot less in fact. But I would be hesitant to put these in a circuit where I'd need something like 30 or 40 of them!
Very nice build, Mr. Lin! The boutique parts really set it apart from other builds. I'm also enjoying the discussion regarding resistors. I recently tried both the Kiwame "greens" and PRP "reds" (carbon film) in my Stereomour. I settled on the PRPs as I felt they were a little more transparent. Here are my comments on the two resistors from the Stereomour thread:
Just a quick update: I switched out my 100K resistors on the RCA input jacks to red bodied PRP resistors (Precsion Resistive Products 9372 audio series). These are a little more "clear" and a little less "soft" but who can really say with this kind of tweak! I just wanted to try out a second high quality resistor to see what I thought. I can recommend the Kiwame "greens" if you like a smooth, groovy kind of sound and the PRP "reds" if you like a clean, precise kind of sound. Both sound great, by the way...they just lean in different directions to my ear.
I'm enjoying this thread very much!
John
Thanks for the quote from your other thread John, that information is certainly interesting to me. I actually have a pair of PRP resistors that were part of the above-mentioned purchase, but I'm going to eventually use them in my Wright 200C tube phono preamp, in order to change the input impedance from 47k ohms to something much lower for a MC cartridge I have. They (PRP) certainly claim extremely tight tolerances for their resistors.
Well documented Mr. Linn,
Great pic's! For me "seeing" what your talking about really helps.
I'm that way too, that's why I appreciated the manuals for the FP III and Paramours, for example. Really glad you enjoyed it!
