spritzer

Yeah, I'd be in for some of that as well.

Speaking of the BHSE, I just got mine. The SR-Omega sounds nothing short of awesome...

It's not really fair to compare a Headamp BH to the BHSE since Justin didn't run the former at full power due to heat issues. If it had been run at full power then they should be much closer in sound.

External transformer solution would be the only way to do this but it will also kill any chance of the headphones catching on.

In terms of industrial design the BHSE is miles ahead of the original BH, no doubt there. What I was referring to is the circuit and how it has been altered by swapping in a new CCS.

Check the amplifier section...

Ribbons are pretty much a dead short so they will need the mother of all CCS's to power them. Since this isn't practical then transformer interface is the best option. Now cramming said transformers into the headphones would be a very bad solution imo...

The KGSS and the BH share a lot of similarities but they are also very different. The BH and BHSE don't differ all that much though.

Marc is funny when he's sarcastic...

So true of so many things...

Now that is a headphone I want to hear. If they don't fuck up the chassis design then it could be something spectacular...

Happy Birthday!!!

Two of them actually, or the voltage divider doesn't work.

This is more what I was thinking about, except the audiophile version. Edit: They couldn't even spring for 1% resistors...

I guess it makes me the official SR-Omega repair center...

Yup, I heart TKD's. What I meant were those plugs you can add inline with the cables.

Nah, it's just great 10th century marketing...

Ok, some more progress. I took some time and fixed the gain issue of the 727, just swap out the 560ohm R5 and R6 resistors out for some 200ohm units. Again I was using RN60 pulls so they are way too big for the job... Now the amp has the same gain as the other Stax amps, sitting at 5 on the dial with my computer source. It does sound rather good with the SR-Omega even if it does bring out their bright nature a little bit once you push the volume. There is no excessive bloom here and it has a lot of control for a commercial amp. Why Stax couldn't just have made it like this in the first place is beyond me... As for the SRM-300, the LF353 had to go so I installed sockets and OPA2604AP's Edit: Damnit!!! I forgot to sand the chips...

It's just two resistors per socket so go for it. You could also buy some of those audiophile attenuator for a fortune...

Or move here.

Since Kevin asked me to check out some parts inside the SRM-300 I thought it was only fair to do some modding. The stock output caps are 103/630V units so I just put in some 105 (1uf) caps instead. Before: After: I also wanted to show how to set the voltage of this amp. Stax placed 6 holes at the bottom of the PCB but didn't use them on this unit except for one connection. They clearly intended for the secondary wires to be soldered here and then jumpered on the other side of the board. Since there are 99% odds of me selling this amp one day it made sense to do it like this. It's been a productive day too since I've also managed to bring a SR-Omega back from the dead. Yup. You can see the PCB used for voltage selection mounted to the side of the transformer. The setup is the same as above, you use jumpers to configure the secondaries and you have to move the wire from the power switch as well.

There is in fact no pressure on the socket if you use very little solder and solder to the very top of the gold pin. If the Yen wasn't so fucked up then I'd buy a few, mod them and sell to good people. Not terribly difficult really. These PCB's will not handle a lot of abuse so removing the old resistors is the biggest challenge, soldering in the new ones is easy. Just bend the leads to the correct form (I bent them so that they sit above the PCB but it isn't really needed) and solder them in. Also, as Marc said, you know people and the amp is dead easy to open up (the allen key is even included) so you could just send the small plugin cards to have the mod done.

Yup, your right, no need to compensate for anything there. The SRM-Xs has those as well (green board version).

Ok, now I'm back so I'll continue this monologue but I can report that the mod is a complete success. No problems fitting the boards back in place and the sound is as it should be now. The amp is still on the warm side of things (pretty much the same output stage as the 717 so this is to be expected) but the bass has far more control now and the top end isn't misbehaving any more. I still have to do some more surgery to raise the gain at least 6dB to match the other Stax amps but as it stands now the 727 has mafia approval.

Happy Birthday Dr. D!!!