Letters
Musical Fidelity system upgrades Russ Andrews customer Ray Johnston took advantage of our equipment upgrade service, upgrading all of his Musical Fidelity system. Ray put pen to paper to let us know how he got on with the upgrades. In February I sent my Musical Fidelity A5 integrated amp to Russ Andrews for repair – the volume control was noisy. On its return, the engineer Zac said the layout of the amp was good – ever thought of an upgrade? This took me by surprise! I said I’m game as I’d spent thousands of pounds upgrading my system‘s infrastructure over 15 years.
A few days later John and Zac came back with my integrated amp. I couldn’t believe the difference in the sound… it was as if I had gone one or two models up. There and then I asked them to take the CD player back and upgrade it. The CD player again consisted of upgrading many of the internal components, fitting Kimber KCAG wire in the signal path, fitting a Silencer mains filter and WBT RCA sockets. John came back with my CD player and hooked it back up. What struck me right away was the clarity of the sound and I had to turn the volume down because the upgrade was so big. Stunning. [The sound was certainly much more dynamic which had Ray reaching for his volume control – Ed].
Inside the upgraded Musical Fidelity A5 Integrated Amp
The upgrade consisted of replacing many of the components in the amp with better performing ones (using a mixture of Kimber Kap capacitors, Russ Andrews slit foil capacitors and Panasonic Audio Grade capacitors). Signal cabling was upgraded to Kimber KCAG, Russ Andrews PowerKord linked the IEC input to the power supply, the power filter was replaced with a Silencer and the binding posts upgraded to WBT terminals.
New wiring and caps in the upgraded Musical Fidelity A5 CD player
With the amp and CD player done I said take my Musical Fidelity A5 tuner. The upgrade consisted again of replacing many of the internal components with better ones and fitting KCAG signal wire. PowerKord was used to link the IEC socket to the power supply. I spent extra money on the tuner upgrade; because there was more room in
the tuner, I had two Silencers and two ClarityMains fitted. I had previously had a new digital aerial fitted to replace the old FM aerial (the signal had been poor) and my tuner with the upgrades and with a strong signal sounds like being in a studio.
Inside the upgraded Musical Fidelity A5 DAB FM Tuner
The final component to upgrade was my Russ Andrews HP-1 headphone amp. Zac said because Russ put quality components into his headphone amp there’s not a lot to do, but there were some Kimber Kap capacitors that could be fitted and the signal wire was changed to KCAG. They also fitted WBT RCA sockets. Make no mistake, I’ve had the best components fitted and it’s cost me a lot of money. My journey has been over 15 years and is a part of me as music has been an important part of my life. My conclusion to my system’s upgrade? In a word – stunning. Ray Johnston, Kendal
Issue 36 Autumn 2016 CONNECTED MAGAZINE 43