MENG-YUE Aria-Mini amp. mod.
Summer has gone with all that heat so I finally took this morning to finish this little project and replace caps in one of my tube amp. Since there’s no schematic and due to crappy design of the board I’ve done the best with the little effort and time.
It’s just the first day, so the caps need some time but so far all is so good. The sound is clear and clean, there’s nothing unpleasant in form of hum, noise or such (in fact all was well and quiet even before). Despite its terrible interior design bigger caps still could be fixed on the board but there’s a little issue with the cover that I can’t put back and here will need to do some redesign. For the moment I just screwed rubber feet on the edge of the case. Also took out the wooden part and replaced the volume pots.
Caps used for this mod;
0.1uF 250V 5% K71-4 POLYSTYRENE
NIPPON 450V 220UF
CDE 380LX 450V 180UF
Nichicon Audio Series 50V 220uf
Summer has gone with all that heat so I finally took this morning to finish this little project and replace caps in one of my tube amp. Since there’s no schematic and due to crappy design of the board I’ve done the best with the little effort and time.
It’s just the first day, so the caps need some time but so far all is so good. The sound is clear and clean, there’s nothing unpleasant in form of hum, noise or such (in fact all was well and quiet even before). Despite its terrible interior design bigger caps still could be fixed on the board but there’s a little issue with the cover that I can’t put back and here will need to do some redesign. For the moment I just screwed rubber feet on the edge of the case. Also took out the wooden part and replaced the volume pots.
Caps used for this mod;
0.1uF 250V 5% K71-4 POLYSTYRENE
NIPPON 450V 220UF
CDE 380LX 450V 180UF
Nichicon Audio Series 50V 220uf
This cheap little amp is very good. The stock tubes are terrible, and I recommend replacing them with GE EL84 and Amperex 6DJ8. No modding is neccesary, though you can replace the already good WIMA coupling capacitors with excellent ones like Mundorf SIO or ClarityCap MR 0.22uF. The NOS tubes and coupling capacitor mods would cost more than the original amp itself, but you would have something that is basically as good as a PP EL84 gets.
A CCS for the driver tube and output transformer upgrade are further ideas for improvement, but the amp doesn't need it. After basic mods, it sounds like something in between my 300B and a solid state amp (closer to the SS amp), yet the entire amp costs less than the Hashimoto output transformers on my 300B. Highly recommended in place of a under $500 SS amp.
A CCS for the driver tube and output transformer upgrade are further ideas for improvement, but the amp doesn't need it. After basic mods, it sounds like something in between my 300B and a solid state amp (closer to the SS amp), yet the entire amp costs less than the Hashimoto output transformers on my 300B. Highly recommended in place of a under $500 SS amp.
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Ok, very old thread but ...
I read all the posts (needs 4 days : my english is a bit rusty)
Ian : you are a magician. I admire the way you change a basic amplifier to a good one, using three components and a lot of skill.
I begin to modifie my Meng (the same as yours) and i have two questions about the MosFet version :
- why the 10k pot
- how adjust them
Many thanks
Philippe
I read all the posts (needs 4 days : my english is a bit rusty)
Ian : you are a magician. I admire the way you change a basic amplifier to a good one, using three components and a lot of skill.
I begin to modifie my Meng (the same as yours) and i have two questions about the MosFet version :
- why the 10k pot
- how adjust them
Many thanks
Philippe
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