Just looking for a little input on this mod as I am waiting for the 2 I have on order. I'm trying to understand how much better this mod will make the unit. I have only ordered the units with the standard caps. I did see an answer Steve gave in the Anniversary Mods for Decware gear thread but I am still confused if I have to get the copper caps and then anniversary bypass mod or can I just get the standard caps and the bypass mod.

My thought was because I might get a Zrock2 and I think I read that in order to get the mods on that I have to have them on this unit. Any help on that would also be great.

When trying to decide between which coupling cap (stock cryo-treated beeswax or copper foil beeswax) vs. the beeswax bypass cap mod, the improvement to the sound of the amplifier with the coupling cap upgrade is perhaps as much as 10%. The Beeswax by-pass cap mod on the other hand will improve the sound of the amplifier by perhaps as much as 30/40%.

In fact, on a budget with older amps that don't have cryo-treated beeswax coupling caps, we can do a "poly bypass cap mod" at a very reasonable price and easily improve the sound of the amp higher than if you simply changed the coupling caps to beeswax.  An older zen amp with original caps can have the poly bypass cap mod for significantly less money and be 90-95% as good as the current production with the mods!

I'd love to hear from anyone that had the bypass mod done and how it compares. No doubt it will be an improvement but please share.

Steve that helps!

Or. . .you'll be compelled to tell us something right away!

I've sent two items in for upgrade this year. Turnaround was about 18 days at E. Peoria.

I sent my ZP3 in for the mods about 5 weeks ago. Got it back 3 weeks later. Steve tends to the mods pretty quickly. And the difference is amazing!

Got my Zen back today. Sent it back for the anniversary mods. It was gone 16 days. Fast turnaround! Sounds damn good off the bat!  I’ll give it a few weeks and post my impressions.

Joey, has the sound changed much over that 6 week period?

For those folks on the fence - Thank you joey and geno

My feeling is, on a tight budget better to spend money on the amp today and upgrade cables later as finances allow.

But more importantly, if you are serious about getting a Decware amp order something (anything) today to get your place in line. You'll have plenty of time to modify your order before it is built.

In the past I would have strongly recommended worrying about cables later, and to worry too little about them.

At present I’m listening to some 25 year old gear (amps, sources, and speakers) from England that I’ve owned for over 20 years now. I recently upgraded all the wires in my system to custom made pure solid core silver wiring with solid silver connectors for the interconnects and solid core copper (3N) for speaker wire. Total dollar investment was $250 to upgrade all of the wiring. The wiring I have replaced retailed for $6-700 back in the day. I have personally heard $80k cables and been largely unimpressed.

I am also somewhat lazy and prefer not to tamper or mod my equipment. In my near 30 years as an audiophile I’ve never heard anything that even remotely makes such an audible and significant upgrade at any price point aside from solid core wiring. The beautiful part of this is that you can test this out by making a $25 DIY solid silver cable with loose Teflon tubing and silver plated RCAs. On every system I’ve upgraded, the difference was massive. Every audiophile friend I’ve demo’d this too has been gobsmacked. The difference is profound and “corrects” the signal. The entire frequency response adjusts for deeper cleaner bass, more significant and liquid mids, and a cleaner top end that virtually eliminates ear murder from bad recordings.

In all my years as an audiophile I’ve never encountered something so obvious and clear. It is my personal theory as to why Decware gear sounds so incredible. Steve is prioritizing point to point wiring which keeps the signal on relatively large solid core wires. I’ve read that he uses solid core wiring for wire runs in his gear. And he makes and sells his own solid core interconnects.

I will personally never own interconnects or speaker wire that isn’t solid core for the rest of my life. The cost to performance is outrageous and the solid core wiring can vitalist even the most mundane equipment. No matter where you are in your gear just experiment with a simple $25 DIY silver core and silver plated RCA set. You might not be able to believe your own ears. It’s so obvious that my 8 year old daughter was able to accurately describe the difference in sound without me telling her what I had done.

I'm talking about both interconnects and speaker wire. My starting assumption was that there was no way DIY cables could sound as good as my $400 interconnects or $200 speaker cables.

$25 24gauge silver wire silver soldered to cheap silver plated RCAs proved me dead wrong on the interconnect front.

I looked into doing DIY silver speaker wires, but didn't feel like spending $1000. So instead I bought 99.9% solid 10 gauge copper and some 7 gauge Teflon tubing.

I hooked up one speaker, and it was like turning up the volume and detail at the same time. It was astonishing. Hooked up the other speaker, and got my first taste of truly holographic imaging.

So I decided to go all out on my interconnects and purchased solid silver RCAs with 20gauge silver wire ($90). Then I purchased solid silver cartridge clips, 30 gauge silver wire, and more solid silver RCAs ($110) and completed a very nerve wracking tonearm rewire.

Each time I sit down now to listen I am stunned. Even my mono LPs sound incredible now. CD sounds like LP. And LP is often jaw dropping. Had a jazz album on in which I could easily hear the drum kit lay out. Each symbol, each drum had precise and repeatable acoustic placement. I've heard about this, read some stuff on this forum like this, but never really understood what people were going on about.

It feels joyfully humbling, after all these years as a audiophile, as a hifi salesman, with friends in the business, I'm hearing my personal stereo do things that I haven't heard on $500k systems. I've sat through cable demos, done professionally at company headquarters, and again with my friends, where we would bring in $40k interconnects and compare them to $400 interconnects. Most of the time the difference was barely audible, which is why I long held the belief that cables were important, but clearly the least important aspect of a hifi system.

Being so wrong after so many years is exciting because now I get to enjoy most of my albums like I'm hearing them for the first time. I hear nuance in the music that I had absolutely no idea was there despite owning certain albums for near 30 years. Albums that I thought were recorded poorly now have qualities that are suddenly beautiful, and certainly solid core wiring won't make a bad recording good, but there are many times where it does feel like this is what is happening.

I’ve been using Tempo Electric. I can’t even remotely afford his personally made cables. But I can afford his DIY silver wire. The next piece of the puzzle was to find cheap options for solid silver RCAs. There is a style of RCA with just a tab of silver called Eichman bullets. The idea is to focus the return signal on ground through a single point reducing stray induced EMFs caused by having a circular-ish return signal around your positive lead. I found some pure silver alternate versions from Hong Kong on eBay to save a few dollars. They were a significant step up from silver plated options.

The working theory is that one is supposed to maintain an air layer around the wire, reduce metal-metal transitions to a minimum, reduce solder points to a minimum.

For my speaker cables I purchased Viborg pure copper bananas (also from Hong Kong). These attach without solder to the 10gauge speaker wire. On my bedroom system I use bare copper wire which should be more optimal than bananas or spades because of fewer electrical transfer points. Would have done this on my main system but both the speakers (weird angle) and amp were banana only.

My biggest freak out was irrevocably removing wire from my tonearm. Frankly I’m a bit lazy and hate doing DIY anything. But this solid core stuff is so amazing that it was well worth the effort. Plus when CD is sounding better than vinyl for the first time ever, I had to do something to try and save vinyl. Now my vinyl is giving me that crazy imaging and soundstage that just surpasses digital. But CD via a multibit player is still wow after wow.