Satch gets a new home

[ozcal]

Got a new case for my dac and took the opportunity to do some upgrades.
Rolled in some Nichicon FG caps I got for free ,on the digital board to replace the Nichicon Muse.
Replaced the power board links with quality copper ones and screened all three sections from each other.
Now all I need is a new face plate and that will be it until mcb and I finalise our plans for a Super Satch.

[ozcal]

New look Satch

[mcb]

Thanks for posting Gordon.

It looks like you have gone back to two transformers (is there one hiding under another).

[ozcal]

Hi Murray , just the 2 trafos at the moment. Will wait to see what Audio-gd has to say regarding trafos and the psu boards.
Sound is improved  with the mods so far.

[tuyen]

Nice work Gordon. The neatness of your work is something I aspire to!

Also keen to hear the super satch !

[ozcal]

Thanks T.
Looking forward to building the Super Satch, just sifting through all the info at the moment.
Basic plan is to keep the digital board and replace the power supply board with 3 shunt regulator psu, replace the caps on the digital board with oscons and the tda decoupling caps with higher value Wimas,
The Valve output stage will get choke regulation and more capacitance

[ozmillsy]

why the change of case,  more space?

[ozcal]

Hi OZ, the original case was looking pretty tatty and this case allowed me to separate and provide screening for the individual sections.
With the other mods this has resulted in a reduction in grain in the sound.
The new case is very well made for a retail component with dual layer construction to which I added further damping material to keep internal vibration to a minimum.
G

[ozcal]

Well this afternoon I tried some new caps in the tube stage.I replaced the supplied caps with Rubycon ZL and replaced the main cap bank with the Mundorf M-lytic caps ( yes I was listening Steve and will try some Jensens when I can afford them) I had left over from the the pre amp experiment.
So far I think it was a profitable change as the sounds more 'alive' and bouncy