spritzer

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.

The component will only use as much current as it needs but higher voltage can overload internal parts. The rub here though is that if you have a say 12V/1.5A wallwart but the component draws only 300mA then the voltage the wallwart outputs will be higher than the rated 12V. The voltage output is at the rated current draw so it rises with less current demand.

Most of the stat's are like that for me. This is the main reason why I despise steppers since they never have the correct setting...

You really need to make it to Mafia sanctioned meet.

I bought something similar a while back and I have no complaints. My Exstata uses these almost exclusively with no issues. Beats the hell out of paying 15cents for one generic resistor at the local store...

Indeed...

Buy one I believe was the exact phrase...

They haven't been released so I don't have a set. KG has heard them though but no price has been set yet. I'd venture a guess and say they will be close to 400KYen...

No, we are the Stax Mafia...

No ground in electrostatics which is why Stax made a virtual ground in the SR-Omega for safety reasons. I must say the 507 is growing on me with the APL/BHSE setup. It's no Omega in terms of soundstage, bass, midrange presence or detail retrieval but for the price it eats a HD800 for dinner and stands up to the HE60. Now the real test will be moving back to "budget amps" such as the 717, KGSS and SRM-1 Mk2. Hell I'll throw in the SRM-T1 and the small portables to the mix...

Those outer holes are probably there to secure the insulation and the diaphragm mounting to the stators. Stax have taken the necessary lessons from their errors with the SR-Omega where the whole housing would loosen up with time and cause driver issues. Most users don't realize that the hex bolts at the back (well 3 of them at least) are there to secure the resin shell and the 4 screws underneath the earpads do the same plus keeping the whole driver assembly under tension. Making sure these are properly fixed should keep the phones running for decades. As for the stators, it is all about having a non resonant structure. With the He90 (the HE60 used molded plastic with conductive paint) Sennheiser used etched glass panels for stiff and well damped stators but since the technology to do this was in its infancy in the early 90's, rejection rate was very high. That is probably why no two HE90's sound the same since no two drivers are identical. Since day one Stax have used solid brass plates for stators, mostly uncoated. The only exception was the SR-X Mk1 which used mesh electrodes but since I've never owned one, I don't know why they discontinued that model so quickly. These brass plates are set in a plastic frame which provides insulation and also sets the correct diaphragm/stator distance. All of the phones made prior to 1993 were like that but the SR-Omega and the Nova series changed things. I covered the Omega driver above but the Nova models (well the Classic and the Signature, Basic still used the old stator design) moved to a coated metal stators to eliminate arcing and to damp the metal plates. The SR-007 is different since its drivers are dirt cheap to make using PCB material but the money is spent elsewhere. PCB's are actually a good choice since they are naturally insulated, very strong, stiff and dirt cheap to make in massive numbers. As for the arc, it looks very odd indeed. I can't but cringe a bit when I catch my reflection wearing the 507...

It is certainly dedicated to them.

The T2 could be made a whole lot simpler with modern sand and a different take on the design but then you'd just end up with the BH. It will never be a cheap option but Stax are ok with making less profit from the amps then the headphones so they could do something cool...

I knew these weren't going to be cheap... Goes off to hatch an evil plan to drive the market value of the Yen down to sane levels....

It's more a matter of a crappy store charging too much for crap rather then prices being excessively inflated. The tax and highest VAT in the world doesn't help but some people do try to be competitive. That store in particular is just the worst of the worst. I hadn't gone there for 10 years after they tried to sell me RCA plugs as banana's but a recent trip to buy a Tivoli radio for my mom there showed it is still run by the same idiots. I guess they would be pretty pissed if they knew how many people I've persuaded over the years not to do business with them... They don't weigh much? I do quite like the pink driver model which used to be here in the sense that I also like the HD600. I wouldn't like to own one but I can stand to use them for short periods...

Ohhh I am not. The local Senn rep asked me about the RA-1 for customer and with Stuart popping by the bakery for lunch 10 minutes later I asked if I could borrow his. The plan is to bring it by to let them try the HD800 on it vs. the SPL Auditor which costs about the same here...