Noteworthy Bespoke is the new formal name for a service we’ve been offering for a few years to our customers. We can upgrade most quality items to give them a new lease of life. Very few products on the market can be considered truly without compromise, some manufacturers don't realise the significance of component quality but in many cases it's simply due to budgetary restraints. With a Noteworthy Bespoke upgrade you get an enhancement which is carefully considered to give the largest improvement for the budget, without unbalancing the resultant sound quality by using some of the very finest parts available.

We prefer to work with products that follow our ideals, such as valve designs, filterless digital components and efficient speakers as we feel we know what they respond especially to, but will consider most other items too. We have also worked on components as diverse as cartridges and CD transports so feel free to contact us with your requirements to see what we can do. Nothing is too extreme, we will honestly appraise the suitability of a product for treatment.

As the saying goes we ‘cannot turn a sows ear into a silk purse’ but if you have a cherished product and feel the need for an upgrade then this service could be just for you


The Studio 100 is a classic speaker design and was considered an ideal candidate for Noteworthy Bespoke treatment. The cabinets are extremely rigid and well damped so no structural modifications were necessary. The drive units are of unusually high quality on a speaker at this price point, meaning we could concentrate on reworking the crossover. Not one original part is retained, and very high quality components are fitted, including non inductive resistors, large custom wound air cored inductors and special non plastic audiophile capacitors, amongst other subtle but significant sounding changes. To compliment the upgrades the internal wiring is substantially improved, our preference is to use Atlas Hyper speaker cable due to its neutrality and its philosophy, which is very similar to our own, however we recommend using the same cable used elsewhere in the system, so we can wire it throughout with whatever speaker cable you prefer (assuming its physical properties permit it use). The result is a sound with improved quality throughout the frequency range, but perhaps the greatest gains come in the mid and high frequencies, where a layer of hash and grain vanishes, and voices and strings become almost tangible, real goosebump territory! Thanks to careful component selection chosen after extended listening sessions the speaker also become easier to partner, becoming slightly less demanding of the system it’s partnered with, whilst retaining great transparency and dynamic contrast.

The speaker can also be converted to internal single wired specification, giving a further small improvement in sound in most systems.

The price for this modification is £500 a pair (excluding the donor Studio 100‘s of course). Please note that the manufacturers warranty is replaced with our own warranty.

For the ultimate iteration we can remove the crossovers from the cabinets completely and mount them in external boxes. This keeps the sensitive components away from the magnetic fields and vibration found inside the cabinet, as well as allowing larger spacing between components, reducing interaction with one another. The dynamics and resolution increase even further with this modification. Please contact us for pricing as there are a few box options available.

Due to the superb design of Audio Note DAC’s they are a perfect candidate for careful modifications. The circuit is generally left as manufactured and instead we concentrate on fitting higher quality components, the level to which we go will depend upon the budget we’re working to and the starting point supplied. Below is a popular conversion carried out on the DAC 2.1x’s, the digital input transformer is replaced by a silver wired version, components throughout are upgraded, with Black gate capacitors fitted wherever possible (please note that due to supply of Black Gates drying up we recommend not delaying if you’re considering this modification). Additional wiring is all pure silver and output capacitors upgraded as necessary.
The average price for the Dac 2.1x upgrades pictured is approximately £600.


This is still a work in progress, but is a very substantial reworking of what we feel is some of the best CD transports available. The modifications cover almost every aspect of the transport including the clock, power supplies, component quality, chassis damping and vibration isolation.
The price is dependent upon specification chosen, we hope to have a menu of option here in the future, but we anticipate two tiers of upgrades with pricing for the level one of approximately £1,500. More details will follow.