spritzer

In

Yup, they had them. I never pay list though... They also had a bag of J109's...

All these do is ground pin 3 so custom cables are easy to make. I made one for the T2 before I went and defiled the chassis with a range of connectors and a switch...

The 4CP TKD pots aren't that expensive and there is always the Alpha.

A certain set of LCD-2's...

I bought some 3675's locally that looked very strange to say the least but they do test like the real thing.

I have opened up some 10 units that have passed through here but I have a folder which I've stored photos of every individual unit I've come across for sale. There I put the date and location of the sale and how much it sold for. These are about 115 units or so dating back 8 years. The serial numbers were naturally logged since they mean something with the SR-Omega. As for seeing whether they are original or not, a picture of the side is all I need.

I've been keeping a rather close eye on the global SR-Ω market for 8 years now and I can safely say that very few units have had the drivers replaced, quite a bit less than 5% of the 600 or so units made. As for there being some design failure that will cause all units to be fubar at some time is just utter BS. Stax did change the cartwheel design to etched aluminum but only once production had ceased. The cartwheel is the most fragile part of the driver so if a violent shock breaks or even distorts it slightly then the drivers are toast. Makes sense to strengthen that part but the resin version is by no means defective. What we have to look at is the reason why Stax swaps out drivers. Channel imbalance being the main reason but they never look into what's causing it, they just scrap the drivers on the spot and use what ever current replacements they may have. Most of the time the channel imbalance is just temporary and will go away with use or just a change in the weather. Now a tiny amount of drivers have suffered permanent damage due to arcing or from amps where the builder didn't know how to do bias supplies, i.e. Ciuffoli and Rudistor.

Are you working on that atomic bomb again Kevin?

The fatal flaw has never been proved to exist but I do have an idea what it might be. Couple of candidates really, the whole housing becoming loose with time which means the drivers aren't aligned properly and that dinky little bias connector is bound to loose contact on some sets. Other than that I can see no obvious issues with the design.

Some small transformers for a new project, what's the smallest Stax amp I can possibly build. Has to be tubes and fully balanced. As if I needed any more projects...

Needing to turn down the volume regularly has become annoying (even though I have a remote control for it now) so I do think Stax took the voicing too far on the 009. I'm a huge fan of the over all design but thicker diaphragm material/less diaphragm tension would have made this the ultimate transducer. Still there are rumors about a SR-011 so I might just get what I want there... Still the SR-009 does a lot of things right but it's hard for me to overlook the fact that it costs twice as much as any other headphone Stax have ever made. They can be a bit edgy at times but it is much less of an issue with a Blue Hawaii etc. driving them. It's not due to the voicing though but rather the driver outputting too much energy which the chassis can't handle. The big sound is very much thanks for the external screen. Let's just say it's not there just for decoration. Do not remove it and try to use the headphones since it holds the whole assembly together...

I just got a crazy idea, how about cramming some Stax drivers in the LCD-2 housing... Has anybody disassembled one of these with full internal pics?

It's been a while since I read the Art but is the chapter on how capacitors magically change after 100 hours of use? That would be quite handy for the audiophiles... I remember some Esoteric owners claiming their players needed 1200 hours to "settle in". I'm sure that has nothing to do with the crappy opamp phase splitter used to driver the balanced outputs on top of the shoddy outputstage...

Thanks for that, I'll check it out.

I've been using the 009 a lot lately and most of the time it is great but sometimes I get quite frustrated with them. I think Stax messed up the voicing (as they did with the SZ3 007's, SR-404 etc.) so the sound becomes strident when you start to push them. The SR-Omega and 007Mk1's are simply smoother sounding so more forgiving of louder volume levels and non-sanctioned music choices... The 009 will stay put though since I don't need the money and they are very comfy, perfect for playing games for hours on end. I do have one card yet to play but it won't be cheap, build a 009 type chassis for my SR-Omega drivers. PEEK surround milled to perfection which would then be clamped between two aluminum slabs...

I use a FM transmitter (Logic3 I think) and it works just fine in my VW Passat. The noise floor is pretty high but that's given with these things.

That's indeed one of the reasons why I'm selling off all of my Mk2/A and just keeping my trusted old Mk1 around. Bloody thing fits my head perfectly.

Something like this then: I drew this back when the T2 project started but never made any...

The elastic on the new ones is much stronger and they have this new material underneath the headpad but I for one prefer the Mk1 fit over the long run. I'm a proud member of team melon-head though...

Holy crap that BHKE looks stunning!

They are similar but not the same. The Mk2/A part should fit perfectly though.

Happy Birthday!!!

Yeah, I learned that lesson a few years ago, never trust cheap meters when working on HV. I only buy the V99's for the probes though...

Hi-fi News have been doing some work on this very issue and indeed exposing "mislabled" releases left and right. They had to develop their own software to see this which I believe was offered as a free download. I never cared enough to search for... As for Rumors, I have the DVD-A rip and it sounds stunning.