dsavitsk

I accidentally hit the wrong button while trying to type and posted some unintended nonsense (as opposed to the usual intended nonsense). Here's the cliff notes version of what is upcoming ... All of these circuits are fully differential. Everything except the DSHA2 is transformer coupled on both the input and the output and happy with balanced or single ended. All of the output transformers are newly custom designed by Lundahl for me. Available with steel core or amorphous cores for an upcharge. DSHA2 is really tiny, direct coupled, transformer gain amplifier for use with balanced headphones.. DSHA3 is kind of the default amp. It uses transformers for gain, and it is very clean, very quiet, and just works well. Gain is low, but it has the power to push pretty much any headphone. DSST1 (which stands for Differential Solid State Triode) was developed with PretentiousFood. It looks the same as the DSHA3 from the outside, and it uses a circuit that emulates triodes with transistors. It has a bit of a bloomier midrange, can have higher gain, and is easier to drive at the cost of a little more background noise. Copenhagen-S also looks the same and has a punchier bouncier happier more midrangey sound. It is the "Solid State Pentode" amp making it kind of a current source/transconductance amp. (Copenhagen-V, the tube version, is on hiatus.) L3 has tubes in it and costs a little more. Pics to come in about 2 weeks. Ravenswood (DSHA4) is basically a DSHA3 with an additional driver stage, microprocessor controlled gain and input, and is big and powerful and over the top.

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A week ago we sat outside in short sleeves for dinner. It appears that my grand plan for doing something with those piles of bricks this summer is going to wait until next summer.

Indeed. We have several of those, too ... (the second one down is taking his own selfie here.)

Happy Birthday!

Adorable. Everybody knows that tuxedo cats are the cutest.

I don't know that it looks better, but here is one I am working on wiring the computer to the various relays right now ... outside pics in a few days.

Heartbreaking. What's the name of the shelter?

Carpet, or towels, or anything like that will absorb water, remain wet and cold, and mold. Straw is better, and cheaper.

That's fantastic! You might want to add some small stands to get the base off the ground a little, and perhaps add some straw for warmth. But this looks like it will make the cats a lot more comfortable.

The guitar is a rock instrument. Rock music is 100% nostalgia. There are certainly still good bands coming out, but the music they play and the structure of the groups playing it is derivative of what has come before. It would be recognizable as rock to anyone from about 1978 on in a way that Sgt. Pepper, or Never Mind the Bollocks would not have been recognizable as rock in 1958. So aside from the simple aesthetic argument that the lines and balance on a Strat, or a Telecaster, or a Les Paul are beautiful in a way the Fly simply isn't, if one is engaging in a nostalgic enterprise, it makes little sense to do so in a non-nostalgic way. That's why modern looking guitars don't catch on in a broad sense.

Happy Birthday, Dusty!

I can't get enough Jenny Lewis these days, and this album has snuck up on me as being really good.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Happy Birthday, Santa!

Looks interesting: http://www.soundonsound.com/news/atc-reveal-compact-passive-nearfield-monitor

Spent two hours with my arm elbow deep in a 100 year old drain clean-out trying to dislodge a clog only to discover that the drain stopper had been engaged.

Happy Birthday!

I should have some actual announcements in a few weeks. I am waiting on machining and finishing.

Now that's what a turntable is supposed to look like. Purple ... sheesh.

http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/lets-build-a-phono-stage.2594/

I have not heard this, and I have no idea what Pete might have done, but the specs on those NuTubes are not promising. The good is that they run at low voltages and have a mu of 12 which is probably nice for a traditional tube to buffer hybrid amp without too much gain. The bad is that they have a plate impedance of 300K (higher than most pentodes), don't draw enough current to even really push a buffer, and draw nearly as much grid current as they do plate current. Gm is 40uS (0.00004S - compared to 0.0125S for a 6922 and 1.3S for an IRF510) and the limit to how much they can be biased means that they'll clip on a lot of modern sources. If you ran about 70 of them in parallel, you'd almost be on par with a 12AU7. I assume they are designed for overdrive and other effects pedals, and they probably work fine there.