Thanks to all of the kind people gifting coffees, I was able to pick up a Lexicon LXP-5 to form my next project. The project is well under way, in fact, it is almost near completion which is exciting and you can read about it here (link). I have managed to really get to the dephs of this box and build an editor that really opens it up.
I always think it’s worth keeping any hardware boxes where I have invested time in building an editor, in case of upgrades to operating systems, mainly Windows or Mac Silicon. Therefore, any boxes I get hold of have to be able to hold their own sonically. The LXP-5 is good but with a small modification, it can leap in sound and become great. The key is to replace a socketted chip, the PCM54HP and change it to the PCM54KP. Sonically, you get really good gains. The same chip can be found in the Lexicon Alex and therefore, I’ll make a swap here too.
I like socketed chip changes because after opening, it’s usually just a case of popping the chip out with a tool designed specifically for this purpose and then popping the new chip in place.
Sourcing the chips can be hard. There are quite a few places that sell fake chips but I have been put in touch with some really good firms and so fingers crossed I can raise the capital.
When I recieve the chips, I plan to record a video showing how I performed the upgrade. There are of course, better upgrade possibilities out there. I am a big fan of the work from Jim William’s at Audio Upgrades. He transformed my DBX 163x and Urie LA-4A into sonic power houses. I really adore using these pieces of hardware now.
Jim kindly left details about further modifications for the LXP-1 here (link) and I will search to see if there are parallels between this and the LXP-5. It sounds like from the comments, even if nothing else other than this chip is replaced, that should give me a boost that ups the quality of the Lexicon to such a standard, it earns a place to live happily in my hyrid setup. I can then keep it around for future updates.