spritzer

It's strange that I didn't care much for it then. Could be because I'm technically born on the American continent...

I can't see any way of transplanting the new drivers. There is no way to move the baffle over to the Sigma either so picking up a used SR-303 is still the best choice.

If you are really cheap then you could build a KGSSHV for 500$ but you'd have to be pretty cheap. The SRM-1 Mk2 is very nice and you can get more voltage swing by running it balanced.

You get a lot more extension with the BHSE... The Sigma/404 should be even more linear, at least that is my take on the sound but amp choice is always a huge factor with Sigmas.

The damping did change a bit over the years though mostly it was less comprehensive to make them cheaper to make. Also the glue used to secure the wool looses its grip over the years so you need to replace it as this will alter the sound quite a bit.

In

I've been digging through my stash of gear sorting what I'm going to sell and I came across this SR-X Mk3 I had totally forgot about. The plan was to keep it around for potential Pro mods but since this one had been fitted with a ribbon cable it made sense to keep it as a normal bias unit (the cable is useless for a Lambda). Despite some mild channel imbalance (which will probably go away with some use) I decided to tare it down and finally try out some mods to the SR-X chassis. Those that have worked on these sets might have noticed that Stax intentionally broke the baffle seal by raising the plate with the earpads a millimeter or so above the baffle. While the air is restricted there isn't a proper SR-007 seal so it would be well worth the time to try it out. I've lost count of how many SR-X's I've worked on over the years but I've always done it by the book. Fixed the drivers with tape and never tampered with the damping/seal. Now it was time to do something different so I attached the drivers with polyurethane glue (let it cure for 3 days) and then placed a ring of blutac between the baffle and the metal shell and assembled it all under tension. Round it all off with new earpads. The end result is pretty nice, nice taught bass that goes deeper than before and they don't sound so bloody tinny. The SR-X's were always about the midrange and it is just more real now. Voices have real presence and rock solid imaging. Real bass extension is never going to happen with non Pro models but every little bit helps and it's fun to do stuff like this. It's also been fun to compare them to the semi vintage RS-1's I have here.

Legal action would be my guess.

The 4070 is easy to adjust for better fit, just bend the metal arcs like we do with the SR-007. Not something I'd do with a loaner set but it can be done. With these you absolutely have to have proper fit given its bass reflex nature, more so then any other electrostatic.

The volcano is underneath the largest glacier in Europe so yeah, it could very well happen again. Now if we would have something half as terrible as Laki happen underneath one of the glaciers then that would shut down all air travel for months if not years. Hell Iceland would probably have to be evacuated... Thanks for that but I've placed an order at Fastener-Express so we'll see how that goes. I naturally forgot the 5/16 T-nuts though...

Well Gr

Bought the bloody imperial screws for the T2 from McMaster-Carr or so I thought until they canceled my order due to the "difficulty of export shipments". This isn't Italy we are talking about here even though the last package from Justin did end up in Ireland for some peculiar reason...

If Stax leave the crazy region of something like the T2 behind and expand on what they have been doing with the SS amps as of late they could come of with something that stands up to the Blue Hawaii and at a similar price. Now the 2SA1968 is dead so they would have to use something like the 10M90 which coupled with some nice tubes and the SRM-T1/006t/007t driver stage wouldn't be a terrible idea. Now no tube in current production is as excellent for this role as the 6S4A but the first T2 prototype was allegedly something along these lines.

One interesting bit, the set they had at the meet uses the new silver plated cable but the one in the video has the old, all copper cable... Yup, he's the son of the founder and he also designed the solid state power amps back in the day for the electrostatic speakers. Those could easily weld the speaker cables together if you are so inclined...

Welcome to the home of the Mafia. I had a hunch with the SR-507 that they moved onto a thicker diaphragm again since they never mention it. They came up with the BS that "thinner = moar better!" so every time they move to a thicker diaphragm they don't say anything. Try to find any info on the diaphragm used in the Nova series anywhere... Indeed, all talk of burn-in, voicing etc. is the crap distributors spew. Any character you can hear is there because of the technology used and that's why some of the headphones can sound "off" because things just don't gel together. Sometimes you get benefits in one area and then something else lets it all down. The SRM-T2 also shows the Stax engineers know exactly what the headphones need to perform properly but something like that simply can't be built on a budget.

Yup, buy a SR-Lambda Signature and use it's arc assembly. Same exact part as is used on the Omega.

It is a brilliant amp and sets the bar quite high for what 400$ buys you.

Compared the RS-1, HD800 and HD-1000 "Charleston" plus was told how much new HE90 drivers would cost me. Very big fucking ouch!! I also think I've solved what is wrong with this troubled Shanling A100 amp I was asked to look over. Now I've just got to wait for it to have this intermittent fault so I can verify my hunch. If this is indeed the case then I feel very sad for the repair shop which has looked at the amp a few times and declared they can't find the cause. It took me 5 minutes and most of them was spent retracing the circuit...

Well first off, the reason we have sealed baffles is because if they leak you have waves colliding and you loose information. With dipole speakers they try to extend the baffle as much as is possible and place them so that no direct reflections occur but the figure 8 dispersion and beaming help a lot here. With headphones we have the option to completely seal the front and back. Thinner diaphragm=less mass. Less mass=less force needed to make said mass vibrate. The mylar is tight as a drum so the weak electrostatic forces don't have a hope in hell of moving it beyond slight vibrations. Now with less mass you also have other issues such as the inherent frequency of the system and diaphragm stability. As for the issue of ever more powerful amps, it's not really the voltage swing we are aiming for, that just comes as a bonus with ever higher rail voltages which we need for higher slew rates. We never use most of this voltage which is the same that can be said about a B22 driving a HD800. More power than you'd ever need. First off one must remember how an electrostatic transducer behaves at said 100V and how current comes into play here. The sole purpose of designs like the T2 and BH is to give you 100V regardless of frequency and the load presented by the drivers.

Pressing the driver down with some thick lump of aluminum will probably hurt performance more than it helps since you will have to deal with unwanted reflections. As for the new models, the SR-407 should be the best value of the bunch. The low capacitance cable, the old but very comfy arc assembly and at less than 40KYen they are hard to beat. That is if Stax didn't fuck something up that is...

Hehe crazy ideas like that means you end up with parts all over the place and you have no idea when you bought some of them....

Nope, quad 20K RK27 which I pulled out of my KGSS. This was done on purpose because I wanted the amp to sound the same before and after but only add the balanced connection. That is naturally a true input switch and not the DPDT stuff Stax uses. I see many mini-xlr's in my future.

Just glue them down with polyurethane and be sure to let it cure at room temperature for 24hours. I then apply a second layer on the outside of the drivers to make sure they aren't leaking. We are all about overkill... As for the 507, I like them more and more which for me is the true mark of something great. Feed them a complex bass line and they do show their limitation but the lack of the "Lambda boom" is a very welcome thing. The midrange is more forward then a Omega but it is very similar to the HE60, with no etch or shouting. I've moved on to the SRM-1 Mk2 running balanced off the APL and it still sounds just lovely. I'm just letting Foobar run on random to try pretty much anything I can throw at them. I'm not quite ready to declare this the best ever Lambda but it is bloody close...

XF2's show up on ebay all the time in matched quads. When I was looking into this a couple of years ago, there were a few sellers who knew what they were doing when doing the matching. Dunno how it is today though...

Happy to help.