I have a fully functional ECI-1, here’s a picture of the internals:
Would you think wiring the power leads with shielded silver would be a good thing to start with, to get minimal impedance into the transformers?
Are those electrolytic condensators, I don’t know by eye. If they are, should I replace them since they apparently work well? Dunno if EC would have used electrolytics at that time, start of 2000’s. I know electrolytics are still used in high-end but yes, this amp is around 20 years old, so…
What’d be the recommended potentiometer to use here? This vanilla one is a bit rashy when turned and I want one that’s minimally part of the circuit, obviously.
Then again I was wondering if removing the preamp section entirely would be possible, turning this into a power amp purely. Would this require a lot of work on the circuitry since it’s designed as an integrated…?
Currently I’m mostly using the pot at max to keep it “minimal in the circuit”, as Paul has said… Unless playing vinyl.
If it’s possible to do this easily, I’d love to remove the (although minimal) signal path of the preamp stage and have a cleaner way to use the ECI-1 with an actual preamp, while obviously preserving the input signal better.
Where should I strategically place mu-metal somewhere here? Maybe along the center divider’s walls, to keep channel cross-contamination minimal (?)
How’d this distort the toroids’ strong fields? Just away from one another? What about RF absorbing materials?
About the wiring in general, if I use shielded silver for power delivery, what about the other wiring like the control strips and such? Should they be shielded more? Does anything else than power need lower impedance material?
Any other components than possibly the caps that could be replaced
TLDR: I just want to get everything maximally optimized for this amp, with a cost of under 1000 £/$/€ or so.
(The amp was 1000€)
Oh, I’ve since learned a lot in this time about amplifiers in general so this is what I’d do (haven’t done anything yet):
-replace power supply electrolytics with Supertech slit-foil ones
-replace potentiometer with Blue Alps
-thicker gauge internal power leads from IEC, why not silver in teflon for that length
-replace IEC with Furutech gold-plated one (gold has “best” contact due to softness, audibly a matter of taste of course)
-needed quantity of KLEI Perfect Harmony RCA terminals, disconnect un-needed ones from circuit
-encase as much as possible of chassis internally with copper plate
-ground to chassis soldered, not just screwed
-copper tape around capacitors, grounded
-everything using Audio Note solder
-this is a good integrated amplifier, don’t see reason to bypass the preamp section - the potentiometer is important though
Very interesting. You are (or have designs on becoming) a tweaker’s tweaker!
This level of change is usually reserved for Klipsch speakers! (kinda a joke as it’s Klipsch speakers I see modded more than any other Hi-Fi component).
FWIW, I own an Electrocompaniet ECI 6DX integrated streaming amp myself, so I’ll be watching this thread to see if you go through with any of the mods and what the results are. Good luck!
Alps Blue Velvet.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be compatible… As said, I haven’t (yet) done anything with my plans.
Input selector doesn’t need to be swapped, can’t see any reason why it would affect fidelity in itself. Disconnecting inputs that aren’t needed from the circuit would have the benefit of less noise pickup from the terminals.
As of yet, just designs on becoming.
It takes some investment to get to DO with one’s plans. I’m poor as of yet.
