spritzer

Truly, stunningly beautiful.

I have the parts sorted but haven't found the time to assemble it yet. It will probably sound horrible but well worth it for the crazy idea alone...

Yup, should only take a few minutes thanks for the ever so helpful Stax engineers who left most of the feedback loop in place. My take on this particular design is that they wanted to try something different and it simply failed. As KG said on HF, you need a lot more power going through this thing to behave without feedback and all the sims confirm it. We'll see soon enough.

ALO Rx FTMFW!!! (says a "proud" owner)

I for one don't doubt it is a good sounding amp, in fact I've been looking for a cheap one. I always liked the old hybrid model, the SRA-3S.

Well the push-pull nature of the planars should make it less important but the large diaphragms do need a lot of damping so lets just say damping factor is important.

He probably meant a CCS, constant current source. Edit: Indeed it was. Ohh and I'd love to see the schematics.

Yeah, low output impedance and high damping factor are a must with any planar driver. Just don't try to tell that to the idiotic fanboys...

What an oversized Cmoy with no internal charging circuit for 600$ isn't a good deal?

Nah, that's just the desktop rig but I somehow floated by the whole "amp wars" without too much trouble. I guess I was too focused on buying all those electrostatics to notice the shit storm going on... Pretty much every thread where somebody opens up a RSA, Single Power or Rudistor amp is both funny and sad at the same time...

Ahh reading the archives, what a great idea. Fire up the KGSS, put on the Omega 2's and read about all the drama I somehow completely missed by sticking to electrostatics.

Awww.... Good show, Steve!!

Single color is cheaper, simple as that. Personally I'd be more worried about the crap inside rather then the appearance. Ohh and it isn't sovkiller here, it's sovshiller. One of the biggest fucknuts around and the reason why we have a limited edit window...

In other Stax news, KG has tracked down the reason why the 727 sucks so badly compared to the 717. This has already been posted elsewhere but I figured it should be here as well. The 727 is in many regards a KGSSHV but with the output stage outside of the feedback loop. So while they added the CCS for the third stage they fucked up the output stage for no good reason. Help is at hand though as Stax were ever so kind to leave most of the feedback traces in place so there is no need to run wires from the plug in cards to the motherboard. Here is a picture of the mods (taken by Kevin so it is huge) needed to be done which I will do as soon as Kevin is done playing with the amp. I also bought a SRM-300 for Kevin to take apart and here are some internal pics, front and back of the PCB. What we have here is an enlarged version of the SRM-001, capacitor coupled and running off a regulated PSU, complete with the rather nasty Alps RK097 volume pot. Due to that there is a rather unique balance function on the back panel, a fixed resistor for one channel and a cheap PCB mounted pot for the other...

Nope, they don't have the midrange shout of the other models which makes all the difference to me. The 303/404 have better bass and treble but that damn shout just kills it for me. I had a 404LE here at the same time with my last 202 and they were rather similar but the LE was more refined. That said I do have a bong standard 404 here which doesn't have the midrange coloration. Now this could be a SR-SC1 which is simply missing the sticker on the plug but I doubt it. I don't want to mess with them either as they are my test/loaner phones.

It's quite good actually. The SR-202 is far better over all than the 303/404 and the SRM-212 is a nice, low power version of the old SRM-1 Mk2.

He didn't abuse them, he just unlocked a hidden feature...

Happy Birthday!!

I've never seen one of the 8CG7 amps but it would be mighty reckless of Stax not to mark them in some way. I'm sure they know the bias procedure for these amps is well known and people are replacing the tubes. Perhaps why Stax is moving to the ECC99 since it is only new stock and the only upgrade would be to the gold pin version.

If it happens more often as you push the amp harder then it may be a thermal issue which would be a component somewhere on its last legs. I'd start off by replacing all electrolytic caps and if that doesn't cure it, it's time for more drastic measures.

Stax were always a bit stingy when it came to the size of coupling/output caps so I'm not surprised you like the effect of having much larger output caps. You should be able to add a variable Pro bias supply pretty easily to your amp. Something like the KG Blue Hawaii supply (which is also used in your KGSS) is very simple to build. The diaphragms in all of the Stax phones are as tight as drums so the bias won't alter their behaviour. Did it make any difference to turn the volume knob or engage/disengage the EQ?

Only some of the II/A units have them. Rumor has it that Stax found a large stash of 8CG7's for virtually nothing...

There were some people whining about burnt fingers on the volume knob but they should have tried the stock Stax unit...

There is a bit more bass but the comfort makes all the difference for me...

There isn't a third flap, the Mk2 fitting is to the inside of the fabric support since the spring is smaller.