kevin gilmore

anyone that has ever listened to the koss esp950 will agree its clinical and cold. it tests pretty well, thanks to gobs of feedback. but lets look at the msb specs a bit Dynamic Range >140 dB Frequency Response 0Hz-20Khz, ±0.8dB XLR Input 75 Ohm Balanced 4Vrms Maximum Common Mode Rejection Ratio > 120dB CMRR @ 60Hz > 90dB CMRR @ 1kHz > 70dB CMRR @ 20kHz Crosstalk > 90dB Crosstalk @ 1kH > 65dB Crosstalk @ 20kHz now its obviously transformer input based, so 0 hz implying dc coupled. flat out lie. and its already down by almost 1db at 20khz meaning that its slew rate limited and likely this is into no load, once you add 120pf, its going to be worse. 75 ohm input definitely implies that transformer. that dynamic range number is at least 30db off. and where is the distortion specs. Likely the distortion specs are much worse because I don't see any opamps with piles of feedback. stupid massively overpriced crap.

it would probably have to be all surface mount, so that is a fair bit of work

unlikely. I would never use a transformer to drive a voltage stacker like they are doing, something like 900v inside that transformer and i'm sure its not designed for that.

those transistors are all obsolete, would have to be re-designed with available parts

looking at the picture blown up. 450V, 330uf and if you look, 10 transistors, all in series, banks of 5. and lots of resistors to balance them all. (sot223-4 transistors) sure looks to be a bipolar version of the koss esp950. so its a voltage stacker. transistors are likely matched pnp and npn, and are rated for 250 to 300v (5 transistors with 900v total power supply) there are no power output transistors attached to the heatsinks input transformers are used as the phase splitters IF (more like when) it blows up, its impossible to repair.

the heatsinks and chassis bottom (and likely the top) are all sand castings. Pricy for sure. 450uf 300V power supply caps?

electrolytic capacitor coupled inputs and outputs yep, definitely high end

The thing from lockty7, yes I bought one, and had Marc write some custom scripts works very well up to 40 volts or something like that

That is not a T2 clone. It is a massive piece of shit and similar to mikhail's disasters

RIP Robert Vaughn Napoleon Solo

surprisingly the GRLV power supply makes a bigger difference than I had thought.

updated board file

you won't be able to do a balance control that way, but you could 2 x SE and 2 x SE with different gains

O2 has gain of 10db max electrostatic amps have gain in the range 54 to 60 db pick absolutely the most noise free input fet or bipolar you want, and you can't get to those noise numbers at 54db of gain even pumped liquid helium devices used in nmr cryoprobes (costing about $500k these days) have more noise than this. I have 2 of these and a lot of experience with the parts inside. the dscope as well as audio precision and every other digital computerized thd meter have maximum voltage input limits. So the question is whether they used an input attenuator to generate that, and in any case what the input impedance the amplifier really sees. Because even at 100k input impedance, the meter has a much lower impedance than the headphones would have at 1khz. Measuring this accurately is very hard. Generating bullshit numbers is easy. Every one of the ss amps i have built has a thd of less than .01% with an appropriate 10x attenuator running 95% voltage swing

It should be clear by now that the cavalli audio liquid lightning version 2T has the lowest distortion of any amplifier on the planet.

I never said it was not worthy. Besides at $1k, its at the lower end price wise and besides, its tubz never liked trying to make 2 power supplies out of one.

in decreasing order of money (at least I think so, not so sure) all DHT direct coupled thing (no name yet) and a bit pricy (8 x emission labs output tubes) kgsshv carbon circlotron with emission labs tubes diy T2 with emission labs output tubes megatron with emission labs tubes kgbh with emission labs tubes diy T2 with 6ca7 output tubes kgsshv carbon circlotron solid state kgbh with 6ca7 tubes kgsshv carbon the rest do not matter (kgss,kgsshv,all triode,srx2) did I forget any?

those are wire wound and are linear pots, not log. designed for chart recorders and other antiques. collins thing was 48 steps solid silver contacts and precision resistors. designed for radio station mixing boards, and millions of rotations.

you just don't get it. you are 50 years too late, and i'm not selling mine. besides which they are absolutely huge.

you are asking the wrong guy. I never EVER pay any attention to the cost of this stuff. which is how I ended up with $10k in excess semiconductors I will use the tubes as an annuity later

unless you use a balanced to unbalanced converter to drive this, there is no way a transconductance amp can be balanced (bridged)

flipping the power supply is likely to cause many bad parts. especially the opamp.

the size is all wrong for a quality pot. now if you have to use smaller stuff for a reason, fine, but this is cheap crap just like all the other cheap crap including the tiny alps pot. no way to make anything track worth a crap in that size. you want perfect, use an 8 bit digital attenuator, still less than the price of a rk50 or p&g

I think that marc is a little off on the dates. Didn't the toaster show up around 2004? yes the power supply was completely unregulated. except for the couple of units that had gas tube regulated power supplies. would think that the ultimate single power would be a concerto with the gas tube power supply. Although it would still compete with the SS1 for complete fuckage

not going to happen! First you have to pay jim what he paid for the thing, something like $5k (certainly in the range of $4500 to $6500) then the $800 in parts I threw into it. And then say an additional $2k in labor. plus shipping the beast. and with it you get a bag of removed parts, wirenest and dead Russian sockets, trashed digital attenuator boards, fried voltmeter and buttons, various burned up resistors and shorted and stupidly expensive coupling caps (audio note silver) yes I kept all of that, its in a shopping bag. The second one birgir ended up with, had even more stupid in it. And all that is just the amplifier box. The power supply box was also a work of art. 350V caps running at about 475 volts. And no bleeder resistors But wait there is more. How about the SS1. I have that too. complete rebuild job. pay elphas (I think it was him) $14k, then $1500 in parts, and about $1k in labor... full of holes where STUPID used to be. Gone are the "FUN" knobs, and something we believe was the bias knob