What's the optimal voltage for a caiman ...

[The Vinyl Adventure]

... With the Tirna mods and a gator?

[DaveK]

... With the Tirna mods and a gator?

I asked the same question of the most knowledgeable member on here (guess who ;) ) a year or so ago - mine is fed with a linear PSU - and he recommended not going above 16.5v IIRC. Allowing for my cheap DMM not to be spot on accurate I set it at 16.3v. It's been running very happily on that level since then with absolutely no problems (so far - keep your fingers crossed for me :) ) with a wide variety of op-amps installed. I believe it sounded better for the higher input voltage but YMMV.
Hope this helps,
Dave.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

16v or more makes the headphone out sound harsh IME! (with grado 325's and superlux cheapy wotsits - just for ref)
Because of this I dropped it to 15.5v which seems to make it sound sweet as a nut through headphones but I could swear the line and variable don't sound quite as nice ...
It's not really an issue as its being used as a headphone amp at the mo, I just wondered if there was a voltage where both would be spot on ...
I don't like fiddling to much as I don't really like opening my MCRU psu ...

[StanleyB]

... With the Tirna mods and a gator?
You can probably do with the filter and gain mod on the Gator, since you got one of the earlier Gator boards. PM or email me and we can sort out how to get those mods added to your Gator.

[DaveK]

You can probably do with the filter and gain mod on the Gator, since you got one of the earlier Gator boards. PM or email me and we can sort out how to get those mods added to your Gator.

Stan,
As you may recall Jerry (the Cove) and Gaz and I were also amongst the early uptakers of the 7520 and Gator boards. Would we benefit from opting for the above mods please?
TIA,
Dave.

[MartinT]

16V provided you replace the large reservoir cap. Use a big poly as I have done and replace the protection diode with a link. It sounds very good that way with the modded Gator driving my system.

[Canetoad]

Martin, If you replace the reservoir cap with a poly (2 x 10uF Panasonics in my case) if the standard Beresford PSU is used would there be an issue? :scratch:

[Canetoad]

Hamish, I run mine at 15.8v and it sounds pretty good. I use a home made PSU with a SuperTeddyReg doing the work. I figure the Dexa regs would be getting about 15v as a result of the voltage drop across the protection diode.

[StanleyB]

Stan,
As you may recall Jerry (the Cove) and Gaz and I were also amongst the early uptakers of the 7520 and Gator boards. Would we benefit from opting for the above mods please?
TIA,
Dave.
Your Silmic boards should already have those mods. Hamish has a far older board according to my records.

[MartinT]

Martin, If you replace the reservoir cap with a poly (2 x 10uF Panasonics in my case) if the standard Beresford PSU is used would there be an issue? :scratch:

No, not at all. However, I would urge you to go with the improved Beresford PSU at the very least (15V instead of 12V, from memory).

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Cheers all but mostly over my head ...
Stan to the rescue though! :)

[Canetoad]

No, not at all. However, I would urge you to go with the improved Beresford PSU at the very least (15V instead of 12V, from memory).

The improved 15v PSU was what it came with so that's OK. :)