spritzer

Mmmm tasty... I just love vintage Japanese gear.

Stay far away from those. First off, the cable entry has been hacked, the arc is a joke and just look at the corrosion on the drivers. I wouldn't pay 5$ for those...

Very purdy but show us the real porn, i.e. the inside.

There are direct flights from Orlando...

Any notion that caps need to charge for 250hours, drivers need to flex or some such can be filed away with people claiming Stax phones can be damaged by playing them while not on the head i.e. complete lack of understanding of what is truly going on inside the gear. As for the link you posted, there was probably a good reason why the amp was chewing and spitting out tubes. Same deal with the SP ES amps. Now I for one don't doubt that there is a perceived difference but there can be a range of causes. Fluctuating line voltages, different operational temperatures (warmup is a very real phenomenon) or just simply a better understanding of how the system sounds. Another option would be the multitude of crap designs out there which drift like mad or show some other non linear traits which are hard to account for. There is also the whole issue of wanting to believe it is better due to cost, peer pressure etc. which would translate into wishful thinking.

I'd say Rudi finally figured out how bad the Egmont of Circlefuck really are, not that they aren't the exact same amp. I've built a couple of these Egmont type amps and how Rudi builds them they are worth about 250$. The parts quality is a joke and performance wise they are far behind the Stax tube amps. Now you can modify the circuit and put in a proper PSU but Rudi could never figure out how to do so. Add some feedback and throw out the crappy 6SN7's and it isn't a bad little amp, in fact that's what I initially wanted to use for the Poorman amp project. There is also one fun fact about the Rudistor amps, they will destroy your headphones as an added bonus on top of the retarded asking price. Bias supplies should be low impedance which is why Stax always used a voltage divider when they fed them off the B+ just to make sure no current could get trhough. That's also why you never see caps much larger then 0.1uf in any bias supply (the Beyer ET1000 has 1uf but that one is special) but Rudi uses 32uf. It's stupid beyond comprehension...

What indeed are you talking about? I said burnin is crap but different cable designs have different electrical properties which you can clearly measure. That can't be said about burn-in effects after 250 hours in any piece of gear... Again WTF are you talking about? I was speaking about the fucknuts on HF banging about burn-in as if it was some set in stone fact.

I could rant all day about that but instead I just make a killer loaf which people come from all over Reykjavik to buy. Hell people come from NJ to buy my pastries...

I for know cables matter but we too can measure that. Talk to any layman about the myth of electrical components some how changing after 200-800 hours of use and they think you are retarded. Dig a little deeper and why would caps somehow start to change after 200 hours after what, a few million charge cycles? Also, why is burnin always good, why does it never make anything sound bad? Now I for one know it takes a while to know any piece of gear. This time gets shorter with experience much the same way any professional who has to use his subjective skills does. I could really hold a lecture about bread and cake tasting and just how wrong and fucking clueless most people are. That said, the people who bang on the most about burn-in are the least experienced and have never held a soldering iron in their life. HAve no clue what makes the equipment tick nor how these supposed changes would come about.

SR-Lambda (6-pin) is 230V but 250 is close enough. You can also shave off a few volts since the danger of arcing with this beast can't be underestimated.

The normal bias is actually 200V for the 1967-1975 models (the SR-1 is also 200V but the very first units were 150V). The 1977 and onwards models all used 230V bias but many models still used pre-1977 drivers and worked just fine off the higher bias voltage. A simple voltage divider off any of the PSU lines would work for a normal bias supply or any of the other bias voltages we are using (180, 360, 500 and 540V). Mine is sitting here right now. 16kg of aircraft grade aluminum just for the BH amp boards. I'll post pics when I have some time...

Let alone being able to measure it for either good or bad.

Yup, it's a single piece of teflon. I need a couple of these Kevin for the prototype, milled from solid Blue Hawaii...

The HE90 has a rather distinctive sound so most Stax sound different. Nevertheless... you are doomed...

Depends on which ESL it was...

Could be a later show then. Still funny that he didn't use his own crappy ESP amps for his headphones...

This is supposed to be the same headphone... notice the amp and cable... Then there is that sign...

Hehe could be. Speaking of the tit-anus, I just love it how this design was supposedly debuted to great fanfare at the Japan show when that set clearly used a 6 core Stax cable and was driven by a SRM-007t...

Truly dreadful is an understatement but my guess is that some of the distributors ask for a dynamic model to build on the brand name. Almost always a very bad idea...

The Glades pilot. Quite good...

Stax SRM-727A...

For me it isn't even about better any more, just something different. I have two nearly finished amps sitting on my desk right now yet I spent the morning working on a project which I haven't touched for 6 months or more, HEV90/Aristaeus style amp with rare and obscure triodes...

I can't access the database for all Icelanders (never bothered to register) but given that parts of my family come from the same region it is highly probable.

I wonder if I can get a discount by proving I'm related to some famous vikings?

Yes, yes you did.