Tachikoma

Oh dear, I finally caved in and bought an O2. O2 FOTM

I just noticed that the price for stax replacement parts at audiocubes2 just about doubled For instance a pair of O2 replacement pads now cost $130 when it was only $65 about a month ago. Does anyone know any better places to get stax parts?

Unless you think the ED-1 is worth $900-1k, not a good deal. (The ED-1 is just a diffuse field equaliser for lambdas, and it won't necessarily do anything good to the sound)

I'm not too sure about the PSU, I gave him the schematics for the BH's PSU but he might have improvised something on his own since we lost the BH PCB to USPS/malaysian post. He's an experienced tech when it comes to "normal" tube amplifiers, but this is his first electrostat amp so I can't say I didn't expect any screw-ups

I'm using zeners for the build for now, so that part shouldn't be the problem. I'll forward that info to my builder, thanks!

My builder is having some trouble with this amp http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/head3.htm, he said something about the "getting insufficient voltage" at certain stages (with the net result being horrible sound), it wasn't very clear over the phone but I've asked him to write down a list of all of the problems he's having. One of his complaints was that the schematic seemed ... incomplete. Could someone add more annotations to the schematic for me? >_>

Are those the newer plushy SR-5 pads, or the old vinyl ones? The new ones are pretty plushy and are enough for full ear clearence.

Well, even the generic-ish glass toslink was a pretty noticeable improvement over a generic plastic toslink. Some of the distortion I had with the plastic toslink just disappeared when I switched to glass.

Well, not really I suppose, but japanese tubes supposedly work better with stax amps than tubes manufactured elsewhere.

Hmmm... my T1 made some weird noises last night, which went away after a minute or two (volume pot setting didn't affect the noise one bit). Does this mean the tubes are finally on their last legs? I've looked on ebay and the only japanese branded 6CG7s I've found (which were reasonably priced) are NECs, has anyone tried them before?

Are the pads flat-ish, or are they still plump and soft? If its the former do consider changing them. My Nova Sig improved quite a bit (less diffuse, more punchy and focused, and the highs are at last, present) when I swapped out the original pads (which were rotting ) for a new set of SR-404 pads.

I didn't see anything when I opened it up again, but wiping the membrane gently with some PVC wrap (dry, of course) seems to have done the trick, thanks

I always remove the membrane before vacuum cleaning my drivers, so thats not an issue. I don't think its dust, but I'll have another look.

I have a similar problem with my SR-5 pro But the thing is I've already vacuum cleaned the drivers twice, and its a continuous static noise in my case. Balance et al are perfect, at the moment at least but the drivers were never in great condition in the first place :/ Anyway, I think the nickel film that connects to the diaphragm may need replacing. I'm thinking of using this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140222166435

I was hoping that the poll would be on speaker amps

*cough* updated impressions: The SR-X doesn't suck anymore after a few hours of burn in the highs and lows have come out of hiding, and it is by far the most "solid" sounding electrostat I've heard. I really like the way it doesn't have any inherent headstage/soundstage of its own (in other words the soundstage is entirely dependent on the recording). What kind of tape does stax use for attaching their earpads? If I can find the equivalent of that I'm going to use it to attach the SR-5's drivers to the enclosure

mmm I hope so. The SR-X normal doesn't quite cut it compared to the SR-5 pro and GP. Binaural recordings do work better with the SR-X though.

Happy Birthday... belatedly

I think he meant the used price for an O2 in Japan, specifically on YJ auctions. I'm pretty sure I've seen it go lower than $1350 there.

I don't know much about Leben, but I think this deserves to be noticed: http://www.pricejapan.com/front/e_good_info.php?code=302&category=17 Kudos to Pricejapan

I'll run the L3Ks out of my super duper custom made DIY electrostat amp. There's nothing like high-voltage burn-in man, its just so high.

http://cgi.ebay.com/STAX-DMA-X2-REFERENCE-AMPLIFIER-390-Watts_W0QQitemZ260204807246QQihZ016QQcategoryZ14973QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Holy crap. First time I've seen these for sale anywhere, but the listing is a tad dodgy looking.

This is as quick and dirty as they come: http://cgi.ebay.com/DIGITAL-PCLINK-USB-SPDIF-FOR-AUDIO-UDA1321-CS8405A_W0QQitemZ330203212192QQihZ014QQcategoryZ23156QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

<theadrevival>http://www.1388.com/articles/10_decade.htm</threadrevival>

Aren't electrostats something like a 10 mega ohm load, which translates into a ?k ohm "reflected" load on the primaries? I thought the PCB magically does something that reduces that to an 8 ohm load on the speaker amp >_>