This first part is comparing a stock BS 5500 vs. a fully recapped BS 5500 with Pioneer CS-99 speakers. the PART II thread will be a much longer comparo with Altec Valencias.

Today, when comparing, I have only used them for a short time at low levels. So I cannot comment much yet--I still have to buy thermal grease to put on the recapped BS 5500's heatsinks before I use it much.

To perform the A/B -*test*-('"), I am also using my Setton RS-440 receiver to prevent having to switch wires between comparisons. I wired the speakers to channel A on the RS 440 and hooked up the recapped BS 5500 speaker outs to the Channel B outputs on the RS 440. I did the same with the stock BS 5500 on channel C. This makes the comparo much easier--All I have to do is keep the RS 440 unplugged and switch to A+B for the recapped BS 5500 and A+C for the stock BS 5500.
Don;t even ASK how I thunk up this idea!

My first impressions is that the recapped BS 5500 has a "warmer" sound--the midrange is a tad lower. Which IMO is an improvment. The stock BS 5500 gives me the impression of what people say Yamaha gear sounds like--FLAT. not by any means bad, but I just prefer the warmer sound. But, the treble of the recapped BS 5500 is not at all lower, it's that the mid is a tad lower. To sum it all up, I was not able to do a proper -*test*-('") as the CS-99's sound like a "bag of cats" [thankyou, AK] compared to the Altecs.

Here are a few pics after the recap. The first one is of one of the heatsinks disassembled and cleaned.



Overlook:


A couple closeups--the new caps are much smaller than the old ones.







Only one problem thus far: the speaker B output on the right side hums. A and C are fine, btu I wonder what's causing this with B. I just cleaned the speaker selector too, so it shouldn't be doing this.

But on A and C, it's nothing but AWESOMENESS!!!