Tube Amp, Preamp upgrades -- what did you do that improved your units?

Hilde45,

I believe a call to QS is worthwhile. You tell them what you're looking for in sound production. Tell them your system. My guess, your room has as much to do with your dissatisfaction. That aside, QS will give you insights, regardless of getting their ego bruised. It's worth hearing their opinions.

You've received lots of opinions in this thread, which probably has left you with more questions than narrowed your choices for the right direction. I agree with your price point perspective. Lean on that with QS. "I'm assuming this amp was built to a price point, which makes perfect sense. If the price point was $500 higher, what would you have done differently with this amp to improve it, not essentially creating a new amp? Second question, do you offer these upgrades in-house?"

Those questions offer respect and acknowledgement of their intentions of quality. You also lean on them for their opinions and technical expertise. If they still get bothered, then you go elsewhere...I doubt they will.

Send me a pm here and we can talk more if you want.

Goodluck

I found a great improvement to my tube amp was to buy a power conditioner this made a big difference! I bought one for like $500 and it worked great!

I have benefited from other people who have had experience with asking them about this question. It is denied that anything needs to be improved and there is definitely a lack of sympathy for the question itself. 
 

the room is not the issue. The thread covers these things already. 

@ihcho How about upgrading transformers?

Do Quicksilver amps have high enough quality transformers and they don’t need to be replaced?

No on upgrading transformers. They are good, high in quality and function.  

The bones of the amp, circuit, transformers, sockets, point to point wiring, is solid. Not naming the transformer manufacturer, they are quite good in stock form.  More spec info available in reviews. One of the reasons I bought the amps, powering my larger custom 4-ohm 92.5 db speakers. The amps don’t even break a sweat. Nor do they run hot like many of my former tube and SS class-A amps did.

In my opinion the type of upgrading you are proposing makes sense for someone who is interested in doing the work themselves (DIY) as a learning experience along with hopefully improving the sound knowing that these changes may or may not improve anything and may even degrade the sound causing you to roll back some or all of what you replaced. The big problem with having someone else do these changes is if a number of items change at one time and the sound does not improve and possibly degrades then, which upgrade created the problem? You need to upgrade one item at a time and listen for a period of time to determine what the differences are and if they were worth keeping. Then do the next. This can get expensive if you are paying someone to do this work, which makes me say it is not worth the time and money. If however you are doing this because of a perceived flaw in your amplifier that you are hoping to improve on then I suggest selling the piece and using that money along with the money for parts and labor that you were going to spend and use all that money for another amplifier that sounds better. On the other hand if you love the amplifier then just work on upgrading the peripherals such; tube dampeners, NOS tubes, higher quality feet, replacing power / interconnect / speaker cables with higher quality ones that sound better to you and possibly upgrading your electrical receptacle along with installing a dedicated circuit to power your amplifier. I believe this route has a better chance of seeing noticeable improvements and would cost about the same, depending on how wild you chose to go. The quicksilver line of amplifiers are well thought out and perform very nicely so paying someone to mess with them does not seem to make sense to me.