spritzer

Arghhhh!!!! As it happens I just spent an hour at work today discussing the only large scale battle ever to take place in Iceland with my cousin which was a large turning point in the collapse of the old republic.

I'm finally resurfacing after a PITA weekend at work. No day under 12 hours for a week which culminated in a 19 hours yesterday without sitting down or taking a single break. Looks like I have a lot to catch up on...

Nah, just get a proper one. Oki PS-800e has no trouble with those sinks even with a small cone tip. Pretty cheap too given how good it is...

Odds are that I do...

Large scale meets are indeed useless for any meaningful impressions and only a smaller setting or having something on loan will yield anything of substance. It's also interesting how people are "tricked" at the larger meets with higher volume levels, choice of music etc. Buying used Stax sets does carry risks but if the sets look to be in good condition then they will work perfectly. I've bought enough to know this isn't a perfect rule but it's true enough. I still can't help myself when I see some truly busted up Stax stuff to try and bring it back to life. Let's just say there is a reason why I have a large stock of single drivers... I've done plenty of that but their voicing just irks me a bit. They are just a bit hyper real at times, like a TV with all the post processing turned on.

Happy Birthday Steve!!!

Nothing springs to mind but I'll break out the 009's when I have time.

It's certainly a part of the issue but it also has a lot to do with the voicing of the transducer. I can hear certain issues, such as how the bass on the 009 just stops when you reach certain amplitude and frequency, regardless of the volume level. This is due to the diaphragm material, it's thickness and tension i.e. the voicing of the driver. Damping does play a part here but it is minimal on the modern 'stats as airdamping only does so much. As for the amps, yeah the Cavalli amps, WES, HEV90 and a few others will sound ok at meets but poor in real life. Same reason the HE90 concours every meet they are at...

Happy Birthday!!

To me the SR-Omega accomplished what the HE90 tried to do, throw a huge soundstage without sacrificing pinpoint imaging. I do think it is too bright but most of that is due to the craptacular enclosure as it only creeps in at higher volume levels.

Both are a bit "round" sounding so they should work well.

The amp is a fully rebuilt Stax SRA-10S with the preamp and phono amps removed. It's a pretty neat little amp and is mostly DC coupled except for the output stage which uses small silver mica caps on the output. Plenty of voltage swing and pure Class A power. Now by modern standards it does have some issues such as high imput impedance, way too much crap in the signal path and the output transistors are very much of it's time. Since I have two of them then the plan is to rebuild one to be as close to original as is possible but the other one will be modernized as a headphone amp only. New volume control, 2SC4686A output transistors, all new parts etc. As for the GES, I'm not so sure. It has a lot of caps in the signal path which will alter the sound quite a bit. I do have a version of that circuit ready for testing so I can report on the match once I can get to that. Who knows when that will be since the next few weeks will be murder...

The problems with the R10 are numerous (no parts, crumbling foam which can get into the drivers etc.) but how they are built also makes them very hard to service. The only person even willing to look at them seems to have vanished and taken a R10 with him belonging to one of our members...... On the issue of the 009 being too bright, I have found an amp that makes them 'em work for these ears. It takes the edge off just enough so I can listen to Iron Maiden at silly levels yet not sacrifice the stunning clarity.

Well the ET-1000 is quite good but it was all downhill from then...

Speakers normally use push on connectors for all internal connections so these can become loose. I guess it is time to do some exploratory surgery...

Yup.

I bet...

Too cool!!

No, the TKD's are a bit different. For instance the curve is different and so is the treatment of resistive track.

I'm sure you can get a two gang RK50 for a sane price in the US. I know Woo has have been using them so you could drop them a like. The TKD stepped attenuators are also very, very nice.

Happy Birthday Jeff!!!

Yup, quite brilliant. The good thing about UK tv are the short seasons, less filler.

Can't go wrong with the T-amps. This one looks rather nice....

My take on the WES is that they took the GES, threw in some octal tubes, added some not so clever designs "twists" and called it a day. It's also quite clear from my discussions with WES owners that Woo are at a loss how make the amps work properly. One chap was complaining about poor sound quality so Jack asked him to send the amp in for the "Mk2 upgrade". When the amp arrived they found out the amp already had the upgrade... Then their suggestion was to improve the PSU with some Jensen caps, not something that would tackled the real issue. Some other chap complained about the DACT and asked to have the gain lowered. Then Jack tried to sell him a 1k$ RK50 as the only possible fix. Getting your hands dirty is the best way to learn anything IMO. When you have a pile of parts in front of you not doing what they should, you are pretty much forced to understand the circuit to fix the issue. I'd also recommend to build pretty much anything you can think of, tubes, SS, opamps, preamps, poweramps etc. since all of them have their own traits. I just read over Doug's parafeed article and I highly recommend it.

SR-Omega would be an option too but it's more similar to the Mk1 then not. None that I've found.