spritzer

The military is indeed exempt from the RoHS directive. To me the RoHS was decided by people who had no understanding of how this stuff works and just thought Pb=BAD!! Well that and a new way to moar moneyz...

Merry Christmas!! A holiday best spent with a soldering iron in hand...

Happy Birthday Ken. Now I wish I'd sent you a cake...

Lamm needs to be introduced to a lead pipe up close and personal in my book. Selling a 110K$ amp with stock Hammond iron is just a bit too much. Do people pay extra for the shitty design? Speaking of design, since Captain Clueless was asking where the "Spritzer" amps are, well there are a number of designs ready but I don't see the need to release something just for the sake of releasing it. I released the SRD bias supply because it was sorely needed and took up selling complete units to people once I saw the average skill of the buyer. If I ever get something resembling free time then I'll probably release my ultra compact version of the Egmont as a poor mans 'stat amp. There is also a 100% triode version of the HEV90 that I've been working on forever using a tube nobody has any use for (unlike the very scarce ECL86), a simple circuit to be able to use the HE90 off any Stax amp without risk and at the correct bias voltage and a self biasing transformer box with readily available transformers that allows most dynamic amps to power Stax sets. One thing I'll say about designing though is that I don't believe in the whole BS of working in shadows as some lone wolf. Kevin is all too aware of me asking for feedback as that's how we come up new breads/cakes/pastries etc. at my bakery. Four eyes always see better than two and pooling different experiences wins out in the end. The first version of the Scintilla was indeed 1ohm nominal but later units were fitted with transformers for a 4ohm load. Only Krell and similar insanity need apply... The Quad's have a huge impedance range but the transformers were setup for 15ohm which was the standard at the time.

What, the number system or the bribes?

Edit: I just read the article and one thing stood out, the bit about lack of Stax dealers in the US. What I've been hearing is that Yama's simply hasn't been able to supply said dealers with products making them look bad in the eyes of the consumer. To further support this, the number of Stax dealers in the UK appears to be growing and there is real marketing going on there. The distributor is also responsive to service issues and the like. Without access to high voltage transistors then we are stuck with using tubes. Toshiba did just kill all of it's high voltage BJT's except one....

I don't think you have bad ears, just crap taste. Even mild mannered people like "DannyB" openly joke about just how bad the Cavalli amps are. He naturally doesn't name them but it is quite clear what he's referring to. Now neutrality isn't for everyone but I do think that it is something designers should aspire to while working within the confines of the chosen topology. Running tubes way below recommended voltages, starving stages of current and then throwing bunch of feedback at the mess to try and get it to behave isn't a good way to go at it in my book.

I got an update from Mouser and the 2SC4686A's should be in stock on Feb 13.

We do have evidence to back all of this up but making it public isn't up to me. There is still a desire to just make the shilling and backhand deals stop and leave it at that so we'll see how it plays out.

Well, if he knows what's truly going on then he's as bad as they are. If he just feels like his friends are being picked on then no harm, no faul but supporting extensive market manipulation isn't ok in my book. Doesn't matter who the perpetrator is.

There were certainly enough alcohol vapors in the CJ-10 measurement suite. The comments I overheard from the hotel staff were priceless... As for the topic at hand, defending NoNoNoNoNoNo and Alex just shows that dbel either has no idea what they are up to or he's just as morally bankrupt. I do think it is the former since their dealings are not only immoral but also criminal. It's also been well documented that Alex is full of shit and the truth means very little to him.

The Stax Omegas (SR-Omega and SR-007Mk1) had a list price of 180KYen from 1993 to 2007 when the Mk2/A was released and it was raised to 189.000Yen.

I'm sure the noobs would appreciate a "how to bias a BHSE tutorial"

Hmmm, both good points. Perhaps I should add some purple techflex and naturally not secure it in any way?

Them being people I consider friends, same as with most people on this site and the entire Stax mafia? If I buy something from Justin I pay full price, same as everybody else but I did in fact pay more than everybody else for my BHSE. One part was the shipping to Iceland which is silly expensive but I also forced his hand to let me pay with Paypal but I insisted to pay the fees. This was in October 2008 when the Icelandic economy was in ruins and I had no way of moving funds out of the country and no idea when I'd be able to do so. I don't like owing anybody anything so I insisted to pay now with the funds I had sitting in the US. With Cavalli things aren't this straight forward and we have proof of the dirty dealings with that DIY LL. NoNoNoNoNoNo brings up the LL at every chance he gets and now he suddenly has access to a DIY version? This looks like payment for services rendered to me. If he "loans it out" then he's just shilling for Cavalli sane as with his "DIY" LF. We do know that the corruption goes far deeper than that and it will all be revealed in due time. To me this brings up memories of the Beresford drama... As for the amps, Cavalli has admitted in the past that he has no idea how any of these designs perform. There are no measurements done which we naturally have. How do you think KG came up with the fixed Exstata that actually works, has low distortion and doesn't require anything more than matched input fet's? As for the M3, it would have been far better if run of a bipolar PSU and with a fully discrete input stage. Ti clearly a fixed idea about what he wanted from that amp so he designed around that. I for one built mine to use a cheap 24V supply I had sitting here but never used it...

My way of making the LCD-2's useable.

High distortion, high feedback are the main reasons. It takes a bit of skill to combine these two factors into the same design since high feedback is often used to drive down the distortion of a crap circuit. Then we have people trying to use these amps to drive the LCD's which need clean power above all else. There was a post in the LF thread over there where somebody wasn't happy with the bass on his new LCD-3's... clearly a fault with the headphones and not the amp... For price/performance I'd much rather have the M3, not that it doesn't have its issues.

It's enough of a "problem" for Stax to take drastic measures to combat it. Special model numbers for Japan and the Export markets (i.e. the A and II models) and the amps have the 117V windings cut to make conversion tougher.

I'm sorry for your loss Chris

That seems to be pretty common these days. The datasheet is clearly just a rough outline that one can work around with enough audiophile parts...

So it's time for clueless noobs to enter the discussion? You clearly have no idea what's going on here... All will be revealed in due time but "the agenda" is that everybody plays by the same rules and the products are at least reasonably well executed. Cavalli fails on both accounts. There are some owners who are rightfully worried that they have indeed been sold a dud. They contact us and in the end full schematics will be posted.

Indeed and this is exactly the reason why there are small audible differences between rectifiers. Same deal with the Stax amps, simply replacing the caps in the SRM-T2 PSU did a lot for the amp and lowered the offset. With Woo amps there may also be something else at play since they routinely use large caps right after the rectifier and that may cause issues.

Indeed.

You don't need to match anything (if using LSK389's) to get a fully working amp with no issues but matching doesn't hurt. I for one wouldn't bother to match the output transistors unless you had a large stock to choose from.

If you knew even the smallest part about just how dishonest Cavalli and anybody associated with him are then you wouldn't utter such stupidity.