kevin gilmore

I've never been able to find the chassis mount esp-950 connectors, if you know of a place, i would certainly like to know. No and NO. The guess is that the 6sn7 is running at 600 volts, which is only a guess. Could be less. Even rudistor ran theirs at 450. At least the filaments are at ground because it is a capacitve output design. (mikhail's major mistake) Of all the tubes ray could pick as electrostatic output tubes, ray picked the worst one. In the smaller size the 6s4a is absolutely the clear winner. In the bigger size a 6ca7/el34 is absolutely the clear winner. In even bigger sizes well it gets expensive in a hurry. when we see the inside pictures we will know for sure, but ray doing a solid state constant current source as a load for the tubes is beyond his level of understanding. One can only hope... Really sad that ray made yet another amplifier that i have absolutely no desire to own. He could have done much better. And one more thing, ray's latest piece is going to have major trouble driving the increased capacitance of the jade's.

It can still be done. It just ain't cheap. The prototype was 600mw per channel. 1.2 watts total. Output connector can be a flat connector just like the stax portable. Converts to a round connector a foot later. You can get about 6 hours out of a honkin-large Lithium battery. Or do it with miniature transformers, then it is real easy. And cheap.

so on closer inspection i will modify my analysis. Pair of balanced input tubes, 12ax7. Left back. Same place as b52. followed by 4 section volume knob. followed by 4 srpp gain sections, 5687's Used to drive output stage and preamp output. So basically identical to 2 x raptors, or 1 x B52. extra 12ax7 as unbalanced ouputs. 6sn7's as electrostatic outputs. Capacitvely coupled, same as aristaeus. A pair of 300 volt power supplies stacked. Outputs at +300 and +600. Same +600 supply used as bias output. Whether or not it is actually dual, dual supplies (i.e. dual mono) is unknown, unlikely. So its either 4 wires, of possibly 8 wires in the umbilical cable.

Pair of balanced input tubes, likely 12ax7 or similar. Pair of cathode follower output tubes, likely 12ax7 or similar. Balanced outputs. a cathode follower tube for the unbalanced outputs. pair of balanced gain tubes for the output stage, likely 12ax7 or similar. 6sn7's as the output tubes. Likely capacitively coupled. Single filament supply for the whole thing which is ok for this circuit. Speaking of which this circuit has been published many times before. Its possible that the small tubes in the back are single triodes instead of duals which means they could be phase splitters instead... Restricted output voltage swing, max 500 p-p. Low current outputs. 68k or higher plate resistors... Yep, typical ray.

massive spoilers

The L bracket heatsinks are very easy to install, thermally efficient, and make any repairs necessary in the future very easy. I've seen this done literally 100's of times. Way easier than trying to get a screwdriver in sideways.

If you are going to go thru the trouble to put in a 5 pin switching headphone jack, you might as well tie the switched outputs to a proper resistive load instead. Made easy by the neutrik switching jack.

I've seen the pics. At least one was shipping today i think... but not mine. Dammit. I got to find a way to clone the guy...

Not funny. When i finally do retire i'm going to want to move to a smaller place in a warmer climate. No way i'm going to move over 3000 sq feet of vintage and rare electronics, mill , lathe, tons of tools...

A spoon full of this every morning really helps http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/caffeine.jpg keep it under 800mg !

every one of the products on this page are opamps Apex Precision Power a lot of them come in packages that look like standard opamp packages. They are all discrete inside however.

The burson and audio-gd are opamps made from discrete parts. But so are dynalo, dynahi, dynafet, B22 and a whole bunch of other amplifiers including parasound,krell, levinson and all other fully dc coupled solid state amplifiers. I can always design something better with discrete parts than a single piece of silicon. Can't get it in that form factor however.

Sure you have... Bamaslama is servo bias, maintains 0 volts DC for dynamic headphones without an output capacitor. Would be extremely hard to do for the BH. Lots and lots of extra parts and power supplies. Does not matter as a couple volts of DC for electrostatics is meaningless.

you need to switch black and white at one end. To make sure the electrons go backwards.

The sea clock cannot be heard unless you are right on top of it. Even then you would have to listen for it. It beats once every 2 seconds. The atmos can't be heard at all. It beats once every 15 seconds (i think) If you want quiet, then get a congreve ball clock

I have a 1940's art deco version. Its in the shop at the moment for a new bellows and suspension spring. Putting it in the shop created an empty place that needed to be filled with another clock... estimate 14 week repair time.

I had to have it. I love mechanical things that are guaranteed to cause me grief in the future. http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/jhseaclock.jpg

Well for the uberamp which idles at 1.5 ampere, they were great. They are a little noisy down in the dumps. But really each rail should run at 200 to 300ma, so it may be ok. They did at one time make lower current devices.

Don't know about the circuitry in the smaller units, but the monster monoblocks are a direct copy of the krell monoblocks less the regulated output transistors power supply. They really sound good, and the bang for the buck is silly. Built very well, and made in china.

use the in-line non contact hall effect current devices for monitoring the current. Same ones i used in the uberamp. Allegro | Hall-Effect Sensors | Current Sensors

Actually i do need help. I'm trying to find a single piece of burl walnut. I would like it to be a single crack free cube of size 10 x 8 x 6 inches or a piece of aged lignum vitae, same size. Fine: I want 8 circuit boards. I will assemble them myself.

The real question is whether the preamp output is buffered or not. It could just be the output from the pot... In which case it would be high impedance. Or the output could be directly from the input selector switch. I don't consider either of those 2 options a real preamp...

I don't think mikhail can count... 6 boards with 4 bipolar per board... Thats 24 Now what did you say mikhail was doing with his hands ??

Must see inside pics. Bet there are no blackgate output caps... Or blackgate input caps... or bipolar mascquerading as fets... bet there is no $10 usb to audio converter either... obvious fail and its way to cheap... and it works too...