dsavitsk

It is a pretty easy and straightforward build. The hardest part about assembling an amp is generally the casework, and that is already done.

Also, w/r/t/ upgrades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs

That's called buying sculpture, which is fine, but does it really apply here? Maybe I'm missing something.

Music for Cats http://kck.st/1XB15er

At the very least, I'd get someone to set up a double blind test so I could be sure the thing sounds at least different, if not better, than something cheaper. And Occam's Razor suggests to me that you just don't like the 009's.

Torpedo 3 is now available: http://www.diyforums.org/Torpedo-III/TorpedoIII-overview.php

We have a vegan Rastafarian restaurant in our neighborhood that is fantastic.

That does sound terrible.

Hartford is kind of like the San Francisco of the east ....

I vote denser cities with more trains connecting them, and a tax on personal cars to pay for their externalities.

How long does it take to charge a Tesla?

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto!

Took 12.5 years.

There is also the 24 Hours of Throbbing Gristle cassette suitcase set: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2015/01/12/for-the-serious-throbbing-gristle-fan-who-has-almost-everything http://www.discogs.com/Throbbing-Gristle-24-Hours/release/1352072

We saw Jenny Lewis play at a weird old church in Chicago a few years ago -- one of the all time best shows I have seen.

Had something similar a year ago. It was awful -- had a million tests done, including an MRI of my head. Nothing turned up. Doctor said in the end he thought it was a virus or some sort. Hope you feel better quickly, but take the time to do so. School's not that interesting. We went for a drive around western CT and MA to see the leaves, and met up with family for some dinner. It felt very New England.

There was a time (88-91 about) when records were no longer available and things were not being reissued on cd such that old punk was cassette only. I owned a lot of tapes as a consequence. That said, I am not the least bit nostalgic about store bought tapes. This is a dumb idea. And I occasionally drive an old and shitty enough car that it still has a tape player.

The speaker makes quite a bit of difference -- throw in something with a ceramic magnet and the sound is very different -- brighter, harder, crisper, etc. The AlNiCo breaks up sooner (necessary for a 5 watt amp that wants to overdrive the speaker) and is definitely how it was done a long time ago. The phase splitter is also in that camp. FWIW, I play a mid-70's Les Paul Custom and I like noisy sloppy warm midrangey guitar. This amp also has no feedback, so even with a different speaker it is not going to give that clean modern distortion sound. Sadly, I don't remember what the tone stack is -- it has one knob and was copied off some vintage Princeton, but I can't remember for the life of me which one. I'd place the sound somewhere in the range of Motorhead to Mudhoney to Smashing Pumpkins. Grungy. Tubes are a 12AX7, 2 EL84s, a rectifier ... I think (I really can't remember -- we built this thing a year and half ago) and maybe something else. I'll have to open it up to see for sure.

The output tubes are wired for triode, so it is running at ~5W. Switching it to pentode would increase that to 15W or so.

Not sure on the price. We did the proto a while ago, and we have just started talking about picking up the project again. FWIW, I think it is a really neat circuit. The input stage is very Fender Champ-y. A couple of basic gain stages and a single tone control. The neat part is that it uses an emitter follower to drive an interstage transformer as a phase splitter. You used to see this on old Gibson amps (the transformer, not the BJT) but it has almost never been done since. This is coupled to a fixed bias EL84 output stage which is very Vox like. Oh, and it uses a Weber AlNiCo speaker for a big fat warm sound.