MXL 990 Mod Comparison/Shootout

moresound said:
What is that *Demand it* on your myspace?
I've seen it before on others and it says, in your case, Bring casper to Manchester NH.
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No idea... I logged in there not too terribly long ago to try and edit my thing and I'm just totally lost now. There's all this HTML and CSS and stuff in my text that's completely ignored, and... idk. Myspace, lol. Ahhhhh... those were the days - those clips are old as hell...and they were downsampled to like 64 kbps back then. So is that list, for that matter... Afroman, lol. Easily one of the coolest guys I've ever worked with, but nobody even remembers that dude now.

I suppose it's time for me to move to soundcloud where they let you post normal sounding clips, huh?
 
Potsy24 said:
Again, thanks for your help guys. The problem that I'm running into is that Digikey sells like 15 different .22uf metal film capacitors. There are 5 or 6 that are 50V. Is this the one I need: ECQ-V1H224JL Panasonic - ECG | P4667-ND | DigiKey?

And I can't find exactly what they're talking about on Mouser either. Is it one of these?
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Xicon/23PW210/?qs=LLoUvApQnRRnC%252bkLJjjCjuMyTJAw%2f9PqNHuXoLty5%2fM%3d
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Xicon/23PS210/?qs=QmZ6x9MYSix49ywO%252b09MZwpeeqUbx942RHPYFhMJKbo%3d
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If it were me (and I'm an acolyte not a guru) I'd go higher than 50v, at least 63v or 100v just to have a good margin. Also, go with the tightest tolerance like 1%, you're only buying a few, so 25 or 30 cents more isn't going to hurt too bad.
 
Blue Jinn said:
If it were me (and I'm an acolyte not a guru) I'd go higher than 50v, at least 63v or 100v just to have a good margin. Also, go with the tightest tolerance like 1%, you're only buying a few, so 25 or 30 cents more isn't going to hurt too bad.
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See, I really have no idea what any of that means. I'm just matching gibberish with gibberish if I try to pick the right one out. Do I want the highest voltage I can get? How much is too much too much? The best I can find on there are 3% tolerance, but the voltages are all higher (250V to 600V).
 
Higher voltage rating won't hurt anything, but then you are adding size and cost. IMO 50v is too close to 48 (you're probably not seeing that at that point, but no reason not to spec the parts a little higher) I only took a quick look at Digikey site, looks like 63v or 100v 5% would work for you. That narrows it down to two: P4540-ND & EF1224-ND
 
I got a sweet deal on a Focusrite ISA One today. Get this: the ISA One, 2 FMR RNC's in a Funk Logic rack mount, and a Sterling Audio ST-77 for $450. I'll be reselling the RNC's, but I may keep the ST-77. I had to try this modded 990 with a better preamp, so here's the sample (along with the old clip of the modded 990 through a Presonus Firestudio):




The difference between the 2 preamps is almost as big as the difference before/after the mod. The volume came out a litter higher on the ISA One sample, so you should turn that one down a little for a fair comparison.
 
Potsy24 said:
I got a sweet deal on a Focusrite ISA One today. Get this: the ISA One, 2 FMR RNC's in a Funk Logic rack mount, and a Sterling Audio ST-77 for $450. I'll be reselling the RNC's, but I may keep the ST-77. I had to try this modded 990 with a better preamp, so here's the sample (along with the old clip of the modded 990 through a Presonus Firestudio):




The difference between the 2 preamps is almost as big as the difference before/after the mod. The volume came out a litter higher on the ISA One sample, so you should turn that one down a little for a fair comparison.
Click to expand...



Where did you get that deal?
 
I just ordered the P4540-ND from Digikey and the 23PW210 from Mouser. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
 
Well, I did the capacitor swap for C3, C4, and C13 and it sounds even better! I wish I could sing to really try this thing out, but here is a speech test of each step so far:



I'm also no voice over artist, and I have a stuffy nose. I'll try this on drums again tomorrow. Just in case anyone is wondering what it looks like in there, here are some pictures of the new capacitors (in the first picture, it's the 2 red ones):

IMG_02821.jpg

IMG_02811.jpg
 
Is this latest clip with the ISA one or your Presonus preamp? The difference from this clip to any of the others is pretty huge. This is the first time the resonance frequencies have changed - they've kinda dissipated a bit - they're over wider regions, but not as sharp. (Which is a very good thing, in my opinion). Now would be a good time for mshilarious to spawn an alias and explain why that happened :D
 
Ah, so you did. Yeah, it's another pretty big difference. Not as big as after the first round of mods though. This step cleaned up some midrange muddiness, but the sibilance seems to have gotten worse with each step. I'll test it tomorrow with drums again. I'm considering getting another 990 to mod the same way and use them as an overhead pair (I know they won't be a matched pair, but I usually used some type of spaced pair placement anyway).
 
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