spritzer

Well there is a story about those holes. When the Exstata was under development and I was still a part of that, I insisted that the board had holes around the heatsinks to suck up air from underneath. Alex dismissed this but finally gave in when he saw it was a good idea. Here this is taken to the extreme though as it's compromised the structural integrity of the board. One funny thing are the ground traces on top of the board. Almost no other traces are there so why on earth isn't there a solid ground plane? It lowers the noise and there are no drawbacks. Doesn't make any sense...

Time to share my joy with the amp board. To start off with, there is no way in hell this could ever be serviced... by anybody. If something fails in the amp it needs a new amp board as the CCS is utterly impossible to get to and the output devices are little better. The CCS has to be the most stupid design I've ever come across, 12 small sinks in a row, all of them with the overly long screws mounted one way so if KSA1156 nr. 11 or 12 needs to be replaced all of them have to be removed. Alternating the screws and using much smaller ones would have made it possible to service this thing. Anyway, time to crack on... This is how all of the mosfets are mounted. That red bit is similar to mica pads but plastic and flexible. Similar to mica these need thermal paste on both sides to conduct heat properly... How the transistors are mounted. Screw, shoulder washer, transistor, isolating film, heatsink, another shoulder washer, locking washer and the nut. So the screw is floating but to accomplish that they needed to do this: ...drill out the center holes in all the heatsinks. The middle one is a stock unit out of a new box from Aavid. What a colossal waste of time and to make matters worse, this just increases the output capacitance of the amp. That's not something it could afford... The main culprit are these. Data sheet can be found here, look for Coss and remember that two of these drive each side of the headphones and the capacitance of the main Stax lineup is 110pf. The SR-003 is 44pf and it sounds utterly horrid. Here is what the amp board looks like now. Need to remove a bunch of parts and start building up the new CCS. I'll also add terminals for the input, redo the whole input section as the soldering is quite bad. Perhaps I should get some JPS cable for its magical properties? Either that or the 50+ year old milspec silver wire cable Kevin gave me.

Yeah... dbel talking about anything Kevin has designed is going to be fair and honest. Been busy stripping the amp PCB and holy fuck this is cheap. I'm sure they had to force Imagineering to make something so thin. The mounting of the transistors is something truly special. Stay tuned for pictures...

Happy Birthday!!!

Don't I know it. Amp PCB sitting on the bench and I'm pulling heatsinks...

I've heard it thanks to a Hennyo PSU. The spark between the rectifiers blinded me for a bit...

I started the tear down of the amp. Here is the back of the front panel: I'm impressed, this is very, very nicely done. Here is the front panel stripped: Here is a closeup of the sockets. The drawback of these sockets is how sensitive they are to the metal pins. Here is a picture of the power switch and the paint flaking off: Here is the knob or rather the back of it. Nice paint spray effect, why this isn't powder coated I don't know. Far more durable... The sockets, front and back. Pretty nice design. Taken apart. Headamp Teflon socket for comparison ...and here is why they are almost impossible to use. When the Headamp sockets were made extreme care was taken to get the clamping force just right. The pins just need to be moved a bit to loosen the clamping force. Almost impossible to get them out of the chassis though... Bottom of the amp PCB. Let's play spot the cold solder joints... The PSU board.

There was just one Hennyo built amp in circulation and it blew up... as soon as it arrived. Stay tuned for some pics...

Ohh yes, the Exstata is better than the M-10. My Exstata has been on loan for the last few years but I tried it recently just as a refresher and it wasn't nearly as bad. It runs at +/-350V and uses a BHSE PSU though...

I'm a bit worried that the PSU may pose some problems but I can make something useful out of this pile of parts. Moar pics later as I start stripping it down.

Yeah and the M-20 is just about as bad as the M-10. That one is 1500$ though...

Watching the show it took me a while to figure out what that song was. Very good cover...

Yes, same math they used in 2006 for the housing market in the US. Moar+moar=MOAR!!!!! Works great... That graph makes me wonder though, does Cavalli not understand it or does he think his potential customers are braindead idiots? I'll start work on ripping this POS apart tomorrow and a new CCS using 2SA1968 it is. New Fairchild output devices as they are in current production and lower the output capacitance more than 10 fold. See if I don't have some J74's of the right IDSS too. Are the LSJ74's shipping yet?

I'm a glutton for punishment, that's why I'm modifying it. It was also about time somebody spoke up about this amp once and for all as it isn't normal that something is sold after just one days ownership, by three people. One of the amps out there is fast approaching the tenth owner in a year. Before I begin, here is a picture of the amp in full D800 glory: http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/ll-1.jpg Easy see here that this is just an Exstata with a CCS. Same basic layout except the output devices have their own sinks rotated 90° (there were two on each sink in the Exstata) and the CCS is on those small sinks towards the front. The resistors between the main sinks are now the CCS. Another thing of interest is the bias supply. Just below the transformers in that pic, next to the white caps you can see two CMF55 4.7M resistors. Those are the ballast resistors for the bias and an important safety feature. The CMF55 is how ever rated for max 250V but here it is sitting at 600V. Should be fine when the bias is an open circuit but if it shorts to ground then those resistors are useless. Also notice the small jumper next to them, that selects between high and low bias. Not the best idea to run these at high voltage... What I have to do is to add loopouts to the back of the amp, do something about those Stax sockets and replace almost all of the transistors used in the amp with new BJT's to decrease the distortion by 15-20dB - ditto the output capacitance down to ca. 20pf. I'm also thinking about scrapping the main CCS as it is just fucked. My options would be to go with a BHSE style design or what Stax are already using in the SRM-323S. The latter should be more stable in this circuit and just needs one 2.5" heatsink per phase.

I've been the proud owner of a Cavalli Audio Liquid Lightning for over a month now. Now as most will know, this hasn't been exactly a dream of mine but the owner practically begged me to take it and the price was low enough to waste money on it. The normal market price on the Mk1 model has dropped well below half of retail (2400$) at this point and this one was even cheaper. What finally made me buy it is the very unhealthy discussion about this piece and the clear attempts of the manufacturer to kill any negative discussion about it. My views will be questioned because of my history with Cavalli but that's exactly what should be done to any impression that is read. Nothing should be taken as gospel but I've put my money where my mouth is and that's not something you can say about the people who rave about the LL. The main goal of this thread though will be to document just how badly built and designed this amp is but also to document ways of improving is and indeed, making it safe for the user. The circuit has been fully drawn up and analyzed and it will be posted in full later on. Any issues of copyright are blown aside as this is very similar to the Exstata which in it self was a Stax design lifted off the web. Cavalli has admitted to that in the past and the "improvements" make it even more similar to the SRM-323/727. We'll get to that later though when I start the ordeal of making something useful out of this box. Perhaps we should start with some impressions of the sound. First impressions were just how small it is and very light. It's about double the size of the SRM-727/007t but doesn't weigh all that much more. The casework is flimsy but well made. Some plainly odd bits such as the volume knob is painted, not powder coated as one would expect and there is no primer used. Very odd... The switch on the front is neat but the circuit driving it could use a lot of work. As for the sound, well the output capacitance of this amp is about 300pf so it sounds very odd. It's utterly unusable with the SR-003 as they are just 44pf with the cable. Same with the SR-007 and SR-Omega, way, way too much bass, no life at all and the treble is just gone. The midrange which makes these so special has no depth, no height so voices just sit flat on the front of your face. Let's break this down a bit: The bass is by far the worst part about this amp. There is no sub bass output and the rest is both anemic and overblown at the same time. The bass has no power, no heft until it hits a certain frequency range and then it turns into a overblown mess that consumes everything. This is worthy of cheap closed dynamics and is very annoying. The SR-007 when driven well rivals any transducer when it comes to bass impact but here it is just a weak muddling mess. The midrange doesn't have any presence or bite to it, it just sits there. The soundstage has no depth and is pretty much stuck directly in front of the face. Remember those bell graphs... that's how it sounds. Some output low down on each side but almost everything in the center. The HE90/Stax hybrid I have rivals even the Sigma's when it comes to casting a vast soundstage but here it is just dead. The lovely out of head experience of the SR-Omega... completely gone. Voices are separate and not really joined in with the rest of the stage, almost like a bubble directly in front of the eyes. Truly weird and it's there no matter the recording. The top end is highly rolled off, there are no shimmering cymbals here or guitars piercing as they are driven into overload. Nope, just lifeless and inoffensive. I can see people liking the SR-009 with this but it's like taking a sledgehammer to the sound. Instead of gently molding the top end it's just cut off entirely. Now this is the Liquid Lightning Mk1 I have here so how different is it to the Mk2? Well until I posted my findings it was supposed to be identical on the inside, all the same parts used and just some slight tweaking plus the new case. Now suddenly it is massively different and a gigantic improvement. Nothing backs this up, no pictures, no clearly defined part changes and only the testimony of people to who I wouldn't take at their word. Until something comes along that actually backs up these stories of major improvements then I have to assume that they are exactly the same. Same output devices which have a combined output capacitance of 270pf per transducer and the same fucked CCS that kills the top end and fucks up the phasing on the low end. Finally the first steps in improving this pile of fail. I naturally needed to change it to 230V so I was greeted by this: That is not a very professional job to be honest. Two wires are the primary windings of the small standby transformer and the two green wires are the pass through to the large HV transformer. Here is how I did it. Fun fact, there is actually no locknut on that grounding post. There are two lock washers but they are both right next to the eyelet, there is none on the nut which secures the whole assembly. You can see where this is going, fucking amateur hour... To cap this off I decided the blue knob had to go. This is what I had "in stock": Much better and since that is a Headamp knob I hoped that the amp would sound a bit better. It didn't...

Well yes but one goes hand in hand with the other. They are only there under fault situations though.

It was on Y!JP but you have to know where to look. No way that the transformer would survive driving the ECC99's. It's run on the edge as it is. You can put the output resistors directly on the socket. They are simply there to limit the output voltage should any of them short to ground.

The schematics will be posted and some measurements but don't expect some fancy AP graphs like the one on the Cavalli site which break the laws of physics. One thing off the top of my head, the PSU has 20 times the noise of the KGSSHV unit and drifts all over the place. That's the good part of the amp though... I was changing the amp to 230V yesterday and decided that horrible knob had to go. That one I got from Justin... I do think that this issue deserves a new thread so I'll probably start one later. I'll also include new impressions based on some time with the Omegas, SR-X Mk3 Pro and the SR-003. The last one was not a pleasant experience. The output capacitance of the amp is roughly 7 times that of the headphones. Edit: I've also found one major safety issue with the LL. Complete fuckup and goes to show how clueless these idiots are. Think ballast resistors rated at max 250V running at 600V. Under normal conditions this isn't a problem due to the open circuit but if the bias shorts to anywhere this is your only safety mechanism. Also, no output resistors on the amplifier. Not a good idea... I never bothered to draw it up but this is what it looks like: http://www.op316.com/tubes/schema/image/stax-srm1.jpg Just fill in the values. Stax never did packages back in the day. Some distributor may have bundled something together but the first official combo was the SR-5NB/SRD-7Mk2 in a cheap plastic container. 1N4007 works just fine, nothing eating up 1A of current in there. I would double up for a full bridge but that is optional. Those are the output caps btw. and I always replace them. In vintage Stax news I bought that SRA-7S in Japan. A lot work to repair it but a perfect match for my SR-1's.

I don't think I could sell this one to be honest. It's just too bloody bad...

T1 is just mehhhh. Not good... not bad... it just sits there but not in a good way. The 727 is not doing the 009 any favors though. Pretty much the same as the steaming pile of fail on the top of the rack here... So when I'll make it useable, should I change the color of the power button and the knob? I'm thinking silver with amber led's... Frank Zappa - Dinah-Moe-Humm is utterly unlistenable on bass light transducers. Nothing but out of control bass...

That's a lovely box you have there. Good point. We need Kevin to start work on some stronger, non conductive screws...

Haven't touched it after the initial mod. Not sure if anything can be done with it to be honest. Steaming pile of shit that one... I anybody knows about a good BJT that is 800V or more in a DPAK package I'm all ears. Low output capacitance is a must have.

Ohh so true. Give me BJT's or give me death!!!

Ok, I think I've found a good set of earpads for these and they were dirt cheap, the Brainwavz HM5 pads. They were a bit too small so some force is needed to attach them but the material is quite nice and they are very comfy. The sound seems to strike the correct balance so lively yet about as neutral as they can be. The really good bit... they cost 17$ shipped for the pair.

Well the schematic being wrong doesn't surprise anybody, this is Stax after all. They always leave errors in the schematics. This amp was also in production for a long time and during that time semiconductors came of age so to speak. Ohhh and you can still buy the design today.... it's called the KingSound M-10 and is fucking awful.