spritzer

Nope, he used the Plitrons but they are just stupid. Heavy metal casing and who needs two 285VA transformers for that amp? Makes no sense when one 300VA unit is utter overkill. It will get custom made PSU too with the C- built in and everything crammed into one box...because fuck you Mikhail. I don't need an amp that is that heavy and almost a meter tall.

Not sleeping is what I do....

Sounds plausible... In Stax news Kevin felt I didn't have enough stuff to work on so he's sending me his Single Power ES-2 to rebuild. I said hell no to those crazy transformers Mikhail used so I can come up with a whole new PSU design. Should be fun and a whole crapload of work. Also the Chinese KGSS clone came in from a loan with the volume control busted. Had to spend some two hours yesterday rewiring it completely but now it works perfectly and some people will not get it back on loan...

Ditto on Zonealarm. Been using it for years just for this purpose.

Good for the mono crowd...

I just use what ever I have at hand. It will change now as I run down the old supply of wire and switch to the new stuff

Happy Birthday Jim!!

I have a few dozen of them. The same PCB also takes the TKD 4cp-601 or even the 2cp. Ditto on the dual gang RK27.

Pure win there.

It should be dead silent. Did you clean the flux off the boards? That could be creating a short somewhere.

The signal passes through a lot of the other resistors too... Stick with RN60D and it will be fine. For the record, I added those resistors to help prevent attenuator issues. They can be bypassed but I'd recommend keeping them as they won't do any harm and can prevent some minor headaches.

I mount the sockets to the chassis and there they will stay.

That will be just fine.

...or those of us that hoarded Stax sockets.

Can you adjust the balance and offset on the offending channel?

The BHSE used to have the WPI sockets and only a handful had genuine Stax sockets. Mine is one of those...

It is a cracking amplifier. Next time around I'll test one with the current production pentodes.

Fuck!!!!

Happy Birthday!!

Yeah, the 007 will not work well with them but the SR-X Mk3 Pro worked pretty well, same with Lambdas. You can confirm though that it is possible to build a small Stax transformer that fits into your hand and actually works?

It really depends on the inrush current of the transformer but a 3AT would be my pick for US use.

Happy Birthday Deepak!!!

The next ones will be silver as they are just waiting for transformers. After that there will be two black units...

I doubt the verto was damanged, the reviewer just didn't listen loudly enough to energize the bias supply. Even Eric has said there is no sound for the first two minutes which is not good for the health of the diaphragm. Those small boxes worked just fine off a Grado RA-1 (normal version) driven by an iphone.

Here is a good article on the awesomeness of the Verto: http://hifipig.com/audiovalve-verto-and-rkv-mk-3-headphone-amplifiers/ So it basically doesn't work and I can't say I'm surprised. I've seen a lot of takes on the self bias idea over the years but this one is by far the worst. As one would imagine, to get +580V bias off the music signal would require some step up to help matters when the audio signal is low. No such luck here, just a huge voltage multiplier with all the issues they have and a pile of parts needed for it to work... or not as it happens. I built these: ...and they worked perfectly off a portable headphone amplifier and fit into the palm of your hand. Me thinks the person responsible for the Verto hasn't got a clue how to do this properly... As for the subject of transformers, it's been well known since the dawn of electrostatics that they didn't match well with transformers. Look at the history of brands like Sound Lab and Acoustat who spent a lot of time to make the transformers less of a crippling weak link in the performance of the panels. So many different designs have been attempted over the years but none have truly worked and the inductive nature of transformers and electrostatics don't play well together. For speakers they are a necessity given the very high voltages (Soundlab are up to what now, 20kV bias) but for headphones we can run on +/-400V and overdrive the transducers so amplifiers are a no-brainer. A word about just how stupid eric65 really is. I mean this is epic shit and he just can't figure out how moronic this really is. His great mod is to bypass the shitty transformers of the Woo WEE as according to him the gain is too high. Granted 1:50 transformers are a bit too much today and the iron Woo is using is wholly unsuitable for the job so good riddance. What Eric does though is he drives the Stax directly off the TRS plug on the RKV... wait for it.... single ended that is. - stators are grounded so there is at least that but we are talking about distortion close to the 20% mark and at very low volume. The theoretical max voltage swing of the RKV is 200Vpp but in reality it will be lower and we all know how great amps are when running right on the limit.