and with not too hard to drive speakers I use). OTOH, small scale acoustic music that coveys convincing presence and emotion is also important to me - so really anxious to find out if I can get there without the EL34 conversion.Of course I agree on the varying opinions of tweaks, but I still find that such feedback can be valuable especially when dealing with a specific product and you get to know the other person's priorities. E.g. my personal powercord experience with my CT5 pre-amp suggests to me that the power supply design is such that it is not easily influenced by what comes in (a good thing I suppose). My prior ARC pre was responsive to PC cords, and my MV55 was super responsive to a PC cord change. The one I tried in the MV55 completely ruined it! Slow, muddy, etc. That was a captive cord so was a PITA to do and so only tried one Kimber cord option that I thought might work (most of my cabling is Kimber). Sound was fully restored upon reinstalling the OEM cord, but likely there is a cord out there that could 'improve' that little guy.
For me, changing plate fuses on either of my older CJ amps made obvious changes to the sound (as did, to lesser degrees, most other fuse experiments I've done). Sadly for the classic CJ gear that use those big 38mm fuses, only HiFi tuning offered them - and has stopped making them. Even more sad for me was realizing that my ARTsa still uses these same plate fuses - ugghhh! (but I have a plan there).
We should prob move any in-depth discussions on the general merits of tweaking and why some don't experience important differences, to another thread, but I will say that I find your very different observations on this subject very intriguing...
