Beginners Guide: DIY Hifi Amplifier Upgrade, Power Supply

Following on from our speaker crossover upgrade video, Elliot decided to buy a Cambridge Audio amplifier from eBay to see what DIY upgrades (Nick) we could do.

What this amp provides at the secondhand price point of £40-70 is plenty sufficient: four line inputs, treble and bass controls, tape monitor, space for an optional magnetic phono preamp and a sound when combined with the newly upgraded speakers that was, to some surprise, pretty good. Not lacking in definition, already this little setup started showing promising signs. In this video Nick takes us through opening an amp for the first time and upgrading the capacitors in the power supply.

After giving the speaker and amp upgrades some time to settle, its safe to say the difference is impressive. The bass and treble stacks have a musical EQ sweep that makes getting a good balance simple; the amp definately needs the EQ, sometime requiring tweaks between genres, but to the unkowning ear this is clearly a good sounding hifi system. The more I hear whats possible from a few simple upgrades, the slippier the slope seems the get...

To check out the range of Mundorf capacitors on the HiFi Collective site please click here.

Or for the caps using in this video here.

Please subscribe to our Youtube channel by following this link!