spritzer

If the background of any electrostatic amp isn't completely silent then the amp has some serious issues. The SRM-T2 has a bit of background hum but that's Stax own doing as I've manged to avoid it with same filament mess in my ESX. As for the exstata, it appears to be turning into a RSA-like fanclub since I've gotten PM's from two owners this week asking me for advice as they were not happy with what they were hearing. Nothing wrong with that (we all have different tastes after all) but being afraid to post about it from fear of retaliation is very fucked up.

Hmmm here I was thinking that MOAR BETTAH fuses would be the ideal tweaks for the Maggies...

I tried to find the picture on my system but I must not have saved it. If Kevin sees this then he's sure post it. My ES-1 used the chassis and standoffs for the ground wiring (the ground from the PSU was tied to the chassis and not connected to the signal ground).

Happy Birthday!!!!

I'm with Ari here, real star wiring is the way to go though I admit on very large amps (the ESX for instance) it did make sense to use a tree version instead of just piling on wires. As for the SP amps, Mikhail used the chassis a lot for ground wiring on his later amps leading to groundloops from hell. Kevin posted a picture once that showed them in an Extreme he was working on.

Started work on my Gainclone chassis. This one will not be an easy build as there is no room for error in the tiny chassis.

It's certainly not SP like but there have been issues with EC amps in the past. Now Craig doesn't build any of them (it's all outsourced) but it's hard to see if anything is wrong here.

Throw in some remarks like properly biased tubes and you are golden.

900$ would be a good ballpark figure and 3 amps is certainly not overkill.

To expand on Steve's idea, how about we all post the first HF rigs we had as a small trip down memory lane. Guess I'll get the ball rolling... My first HF rig (and prior to me knowing about all these crazy people and their headphones) was just a HD600 plugged into an old Kenwood integrated amp (headphone socket fed via resistors from the main amp) but since it isn't electrostatic it doesn't really count in my case. My first real headphone setup was the SRM-313/SR-007Mk1 combo, complete with a round SRE-15N extension cable and a stand/cover. After this all hope was lost... Source was shared with my speaker rig and the interconnects used cost more then the amp. A few months later I got a good deal on a Meridian G08... Now post away!!

Congrats on the 57's!!

Checking every component is well worth it (especially the leds since they are a pain to remove later on). Thanks for the warning Nate, the CT on my KGSS transformer was in the wrong spot or I just misunderstood the SumR specsheet.

Leaving it to charge does help. An effect which we call the electret effect is quite common on lambdas which is caused by a parasitic charge of the opposing polarity sitting on the diaphragm and impeding its movements. The best way to get rid of this is to let the phones stay connected and playing until the bias supply has overcome it.

Truth be told, I've never seen a Lambda driver fail. Break open, sure, but never just die on me. Even if the driver gets only sporadic "doses" of bias then they could play perfectly fine. The best way to test this would be to open them up (no need to remove the pads, just lift up the 4 corners to reveal the screws) but you could also try to bend the cable next to the earpiece and see if it makes a difference.

I can carry a tune...

1-1.3K$ with basic parts would be my guess as well. Basic 4-gang pot and a single transformer plus what ever chassis one can cook up.

Depends on how cheap you want to go and what version of the design you want to use.

We should have that engraved on the amp... 200W+

Pure win there Doug!! Too bad we have zero snow right now... I haven't worn one of those since my acting days in collage...

Could be that the transducer is on its last legs but it could also be caused by an intermittent connection on the bias line to that driver.

Happy Birthday!!!

But... but... did you use an 18AWG cable to the Slim to unleash its full bass potential?

Happy Birthday Dmitriy!!

Perhaps I should bug Todd and ask him to add it to the HC smileys.