kevin gilmore

True story. When my father passed away about 5.5 years ago, I had to make his house presentable for sale. One of the furnaces in the house did not have the pilot lit. So i lit it, and there was evidently gas in the unit which i could not smell, and the rush of the flame burned most of the hair off the top of my head. Similar to the bugs bunny cartoons. So i shaved it all off otherwise i would have looked even more stupid. Took months for it to grow back.

OK, here you go, i just got back from my "hardwood pusher" I call him that because every time i walk in there i usually end up several hundred dollars lighter in my wallet. And a trunk full of goodies.. http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/nitelite5.jpg This is a gorgeous hunk of purpleheart. One quick trip thru the planner to get it flat. Boy was that thing making evil noises. After drilling the holes for the brass screws, i now know why. Anyone know that the appropriate finish is for this kind of wood, or should i leave it completely unfinished??

It really is a nite lite. Just like this one... http://www.eddiecurrent.com/mothaudio/nitelitehi.html except that one is only 25 watts. This thing is 100 watts and actually lights up the room a bit. I'm finding the perfect place to put it before i take some more pictures. Comments from the peanut gallery are being ignored. (the perfect place for this would be back at work, how about the garbage can, a place where the sun don't shine...) But its really growing on me. Right now its in my computer room floor. Here is a picture with all the room lights off, and only a bit of light coming from the window at 7:30 pm chicago area WARNING HUGE OF COURSE... http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/nitelite3.jpg wow, this thing gets pretty hot...

Well that is the finished piece... Its home now, will decide a place for it, then take high resolution pictures with my REAL camera. 833a headphone amp. Interesting idea. Bet it would sound absolutely great. Single ended DHT triode that is one of the few that you can do a dc filament on. Would definitely need a fork lift to move the resulting amplifier around.

Correct, the first shot is one side, the second shot is the other. Its 26 inches tall. Bottom of the base to the tip of the plate caps.

10 volts @ 10 amperes

Actually ray's raptor parts cost add up to about $250. His multiplier for this one is slightly on the low side. Parts and labor for the hornet are a little over $55.

you really want one of these... http://www.abtelectronics.com/product/20213.html In about 2 months it will have the led backlights instead. Then i'll buy it and put the gx45u in the basement

Those pots are less than that if you know where to buy them. The pots are still the most expensive item. Figure about $1600 in total parts. So a multiplier of about 6. Same multiplier ray uses. The noise duality is a far better deal for only $8000

Well its about time, the raptor sucks for grado's. At least in this new chassis there is room for appropriate sized output caps. And with more ventilation they won't dry out so quick. I'm not sure why ray is using those standup film resistors on a ceramic substrate. Those things break way to easy. Bounce the power supply hard once, and they will all crack.

Its not like i want to promote RS products, but this may in fact be ray's best amp yet. Once he fixes little problems like the resistor burning up, and replaced by that red jumper wire, and the fact that the tubes arc when you turn on the power from cold. Still, this is going to be one expensive amplifier. If ray's pricing scheme holds true i can't see this going for less than $3500. Not many in the under 25 crowd are going to be able to afford this. He is obviously trying to desperately compete with Mikhail.

Billy said earlier in the thread that it had to be a 5 year old Can a 2 year old draw circles and squigly lines???

Two kind people contacted me with the tube compliment of ray's new B52. Ray is if nothing else is consistent. Single minded and mired in anchient history. Lets see, 2 raptors each of which with a diff amp (the 4th tube) in one box. Double the output impedance, which is already too high. Probably great for sennheisers, but really miserable for grado's. I'm trying to find a 5 year old with a box of crayons to draw up the schematic for me This is an absolute first for me. Formal show introduction to schematic in less than 2 hours Billy definitely named the thing correctly.

You probably don't want to see my collection of B&K calibration mikes and all my Neumann's... All of which are electrostats... Cameras, you betcha... Cars, yeah them too...

There is at least $600 in lundahl transformers alone. This is not an otl amplifier, and sure looks to be single ended output drive. Nothing at all like a gsx or balanced singlepower. And probably sounds nothing like them either. Just a wild guess, but this is around $3000.

Its absolutely perfect because it puts out enough power to wake the dead, then kill them again Without even having headphones on. Its something like 4 kilowatts... And that warning sticker is absolutely great. In all my years of touching and seeing the insides of equipment (including radio station transmitters) not once have i seen a sticker like that. Usually stuff of this nature has a microswitch under the cover that when opened drops a relay that shorts out all the nasty stuff, but not this thing. Scary stuff. I'm going to trash it for parts, mainly the tube and the tube socket. Save the mains transformer for other equipment of this type and the rest goes in the garbage can. Probably save the filament transformer too.

Please billy tell us how you really feel...

Here is an absolutely perfect balanced tube amplifier that would make up for rays complete lack of hearing... Just picked it up on thursday. Not sure what i'm going to do with it yet. http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/ramp1.jpg check out the warning label http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/ramp2.jpg the insides http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/ramp3.jpg and the directly heated triode output tube http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/833a.jpg

Wow, billy put all that work into creating a name. I'm impressed. What are you going to do next? Please don't take this the wrong way, but go fuck yourself. If a product deserves bashing, i will bash it. If ray actually does come out with something decent that is not a 30+ year old design stolen from various places it would be a first for him.

lots more info here http://sound.westhost.com/project25.htm figure 5

That was the stereophile mini review right??? I think he was trying to be kind. Loved the knobs and adjustable everything. The bass thing is definitely a big problem. Excessive amounts of subsonic's can only do bad things like overpower the amplifier, overheat the driver and possibly overextend the drivers physical abilities. That applies to every single speaker whether decent or otherwise and certainly every dynamic headphone. May even apply to the stax. A second order rolloff (i.e. 12 db/octave) below 20hz is part of the riaa spec. Back when the spec was created the phono carts at the time did not have the compliance they do now, and barely responded to 50hz let alone record warp. Many of the other expensive phono preamps out there (levinson,krell,sutherland,pass) add an additional 2 pole filter to get 24db/octave below 20hz.

Pfizer is a truely wonderful company. Donated several million dollars worth of state of the art equipment to the chemistry department at northwestern university. Hope they do it again soon.

Correct, the xr10b is completely an unbalanced amplifier with a drv134 as the unbalanced to balanced converter. http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/drv134.html Most people i've talked to consider the high frequency end to be significantly over exaggerated. In addition the low frequency rumble filter is missing. Put this thing on a system with Wilsons and rumble city and seriously flapping woofers. Which cause the woofers to fail in short order. In addition the riaa curve is not very accurate. It could have been so much more. Since a phono cart can really be considered a balanced source, the whole thing could have and should have been balanced, input to output. There are some phono sections that cost significantly less that are... http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/xr10bs.gif Now back to the bomber. the B52 is a fitting name. Designed and built from the 1940's thru the end of the 1950's it truely is an anchient history piece.

no no no "its da bomb (er)"

Ray has been working hard on this one, and for quite some time. Wanted it out before the GSX, that did not happen. Definitely balanced and from what i'm told, solid state. Which probably means 2 x hr2 in one box. Ray has so little clue in general (like the balanced output on his phono preamp) that he is bound to get this wrong too. I'm sure he will show it at the april show, and of course it will be the most wonderfulest thing ever. Wait, if its emmeline II then it has to be tubes. That should be even worse.