Top resistors

I haven't done any resistor rolling myself, but, I once spoke to the designer/builder of amps and preamps who did not like the S102 for his designs. He found the resulting sound to be lean and seemingly stripped of harmonics. He was quite clear that the right parts in any design has nothing to do with cost, reputation, or any kind of judgment of intrinsic quality--it is a matter of specific voicing. For the same reason, he liked a particular conductive plastic Alps potentiometer that he could no longer easily find even though he could easily replace it with much more expensive alternatives and pass along the cost (he builds quite high end designs); he said he would gladly pay much more for that "cheap" part which was no longer being made.

if a person installs the Vishays and hears too lean a sound, you are hearing what the circuit is really doing. hard to argue with a 30 db improvement in signal to noise. The main purpose of using vishay is to get a blacker background.

I have re-wroked 5 pre amps of diffrent makes with vishays resistors and have always had stunning results.

Also agree the older copper end cap HOlcos are great for warming up a lean sounding SS amp or pre amp. Also dont forget the PS filter caps are in the signal path, so if you have not added any bypasses on those big caps, you are listening to the sound of the filter caps too.

happy soldering.

There is always a way to balance things out. I tried some of the nude Vishay's in my phono stage and found them to be incredibly transparent. However, I did wind up removing one and replacing it with a Carbon type that makes things more musical to my ear. The combo is perfect to me, where just using one in both locations was too much of a good thing one way or another.

Voicing!

From what I have read it is a good practise to not use just one brand of resistor in your project. The result could start to sound too much like that resistor.

A hint that a friend sent me about Alen-Bradley carbon resistors: bake them at 180 degrees for eight hours and then shallac them once they are cool. This should reduce their noise and help them hold their value.

Yo Johnss, Since it seems that you can hear do you have a preference for a particular metal film or other type of resistor that aproaches the clear , accurate sound of the S102 that isn't bright?? I thought I was hard to please, man if you can't like the S102... The only thing I can fault them with is the price. Not perfect but awfull nice! Thanks, Tweaker