spritzer

It will take some time for this to happen but in general I wouldn't recommend connecting headphones to them as they are essentially broken. What's wrong is they use the wrong ballast resistors for the bias supply or, as I've seen twice, just don't use any. This will burn off the coating and fuck up the diaphragm.

They should have handled that but I've never come across that issue.

This is Woo so the amps are naturally fucked. Bias supplies that will destroy your phones and nice stuff like that. The amp design follows the old all triode design but doesn't have the more recent changes done to that circuit. My Ocatave amps are pretty much the same circuit but with the modern changes. Done right and it is a nice amp. Warmer than the KGSSHV's etc. but not as bad as so many dynamic tube amps.

Those pads are actually a bit of a hybrid as the foam is from a 007. It was completely lost on the originals so I sacrificed some new 007 pads to save them. The mounting on these pads is an utter pain to deal with so swapping pads isn't easy.

Many users have compared them but basically all the horrible upper midrange/lower treble etch and edge are mostly gone. It does creep up from time to time when the phones are being pushed hard so they haven't completely eliminated the issue. This has cleaned up other parts of the spectrum too so they've gone from a set I wouldn't touch to an enjoyable headphone. The 007Mk2 is still a better headphone in every way though.

The pads are a dog to replace so I get where they are coming from plus the recent move to limit gray market stuff. Still a shitty move...

Nope, bog standard two pole units with huge drivers. The film isn't even pre-tensioned but rather there is a large aluminum ring in there with some springs which tension it. Pretty crazy...

I got mine from the bathroom refurb at my parents place. They were used to plug unused holes for the shelf mounts. No idea where to get them... In Stax news, I was just running a Sennheiser Unipolar 2000 off a KGSSHV. They distort so something is up but will check some more. They also don't work well off the Sennheiser box so something is wrong.

I only use 500mA because the difference in cost is tiny and I like overhead from transformers.

Doesn't change the fact that they have been changed and it has been confirmed. The difference isn't subtle so take what you will from that.

Who wants to bet that it has a simple chip amp with a couple of 1:100 transformers in there?

Amps with tubes in them should never be left unattended. The KGST shouldn't suffer any damage if something like the filament breaks or the tube just stops working but it could be worse than that. T2/BHSE it could be very bad if the tubes were to fail.

Happy Birthday!!!

Nope, no truth to that. There is a new version and it has been confirmed both by Stax and dozens of users. Same for the 007A/Mk2 and probably the Lambdas too.

Not well. They just shrugged off when I asked how come 10 units of the same design have so wildly different behavior. They also just love to put short leads on everything for some fucked up reason.

Some don't and some just have a winding that is way off.

The Carbon isn't any different when it comes to transformers but it is just a massive crap shoot to source transformers. Half of my Toroidy units buzz but the other half don't, some even don't work flat out so they clearly aren't testing. This is from a good supplier so imagine the bad ones. The ones I'm using in the Carbon are 335V/200mA but they were extensively tested and I went through three samples just to make sure they were ok. Also no singles here, you need to spend 2k$ on a single order or they won't talk to you. I had some R-cores come in recently that will have to be tested too.

There is no way to do that and be sure that the transformer won't buzz or misbehave.

Yes. 335VAC for 400V version.

So that one is for me?

Happy Birthday my friend!!!

Nope, just a bad amp and bad headphones. Both go on my "worst shit Stax have ever made" list.

These will be used in some future amps.

Yup, the power supply got a bit toasty....

Well they do sound like shit. The cRaptor is pretty abysmal (so is the B52 which is the same thing) and the HR-2 is an utter dog. Let's not get into the A-10... With the portable stuff, there was one of them that clocked a THD of 20+% at the normal IEM load. Yeah, that's pretty much the definition of crap.