Upgrading Quicksilver preamp or amp caps -- warranty impact?

@hilde45, only Mike @ QS could confirm warranty info for you for yours.

re: caps
I’ve come across 50+ Quicksilver amps and QS owners with upgraded tubes and upgraded coupling caps in them. The bones of the amps are great! The design, transformers, chassis, layout is an amazing value. Pop over to AudioAsylum, AudioCircle, DIYAudio sites to learn more. Some builder/members mod them over there.

Keep in mind these QS monos are built at a price point, and yet the foundation is there. However, if QS offered high end tubes and top-shelf coupling caps in them, the amps would list for 2x the price new or more. The stock caps are pretty good, a bit veiled over to me, yet do have a nice midrange tone in stock form. I wanted more.

When you install really good input/driver tubes, followed by top-shelf coupling caps, they can compete with amps at 2-3x the price new. Following a hunch, wanted to prove they could be taken to a new level to compete with my other amps. Sure enough.

My QS monos sounded good in stock form and yet could not compete with any of my former upgraded Cary amps. After a year of listening to my QS Mono 120s, and after lots of tube rolling first six months, I finally went to top-shelf coupling caps. Wow, now they sound fan-friggin-tastic, more transparent, layered, added harmonics and three dimensional. The added reality of the change in tone and musicality alone was worth it. As soon as I did it, it was "there", and jumped again after full cap burn-in and settling occurred. Very pleased now.  YMMV, Good Luck.

@decooney Thanks for relaying that. While I'm not a DIY person, this is not major surgery and if it brings the amp up to 2x or 3x the level, well, wow! I’ll go check out those other forums. The caps listed on Mike’s website clearly are not the kinds of upgrades you’re talking about.

@hilde45, if you are going to go to the trouble of replacing caps, go at least to the copper foil caps from Jensen or Jupiter. Other than the Duelands, they are the most organic sounding caps I have tried. Will make a big difference on your quicksilvers.

@johnss  Thanks -- that's very helpful. I may wait until warranty period is over to do this (another couple years) but if Mike gives the all clear, sooner. (I don't know why he would unless he has some reason to trust the person doing the work.)

+1 what @johnss said. If you are going to do it, don’t skimp, buy very high quality caps. Leave the work to a competent professional, and don’t forget to discharge the caps if you do it yourself, proceed with caution.

While people do it hoping to make improvements, as I recall the man himself founder/owner/designer prefers people not mess with his amps (at all), and to keep it under warranty. Makes sense, I’d say the same if I had to warranty my products and did not want people screwing around with my designs. Definitely the safe way to go. Or, buy his caps and what he likes. And, then you have the DIYers who want something more and different.

In my case, wanted to test the exact same caps I used in my prior Cary amps, to see how much of the sound was attributed to the circuit designs and tubes, and how much would actually carry over with cap change alone. After using them in a few other amps, Installed the exact same SilverGold caps used in TOTL Cary FE211 Founders Edition Mono amps, now installed in my Quicksilver Mono 120s. A lot carried over, surprisingly. Would not have believed it myself unless I had tried it first hand.

Removed the factory installed affordable and reliable $5.95 Orange Drop caps (used a lot in guitars) originally insatalled in my Mono 120 amps and replaced them with $50ea (2 per amp) Mundorf Capacitor 0.22uF 1000Vdc MCap® Supreme EVO SilverGold Black SESG (non-oil) version. Same microfarad, and higher voltage capacity.

Piano keys now sounds like piano. Guitars sound like guitars. Tone, texture, delicacy, transparency, depth in my former amps is back again. Warning: the super long burn-in roller coaster ride can be very frustrating with some of these high end silver-gold caps for first 0-200hrs. Worth every penny and the wait in my particular situation, never looked back, YMMV.