spritzer

6moons just put up a review of the Kondo Gakuoh amps with an internal picture. All that Tango iron sure is nice with silver windings but it is still a lot of money...

Power cables can change the sound considering all the crap that is on our AC lines. There are switching PSU's in almost every consumer gear we buy and most dump their switching noise back onto the lines, not everybody is as clever as Ray and dumping it in the signal ground . There are a few ways to get rid of this and the ferrite in VD cables surely helps but an isolation transformer will do a better job for a fraction of the cost of those power snakes. Passive filtering works too but why anybody charges more then 200$ for those units is beyond me. I tried running my system off batteries once (with an inverter salvaged from a scrapped fishing boat) and even a small hydro plant that a friend of the family has next to his county house. Both were interesting but highly impractical... The best I've heard is in our summerhouse during the wintertime as there are only 20 houses (empty for most of the winter and off the grid) which share a transformer and the geo-thermal power plant is only about 5km away. Here at home I settle for dedicated lines and they are a solid investment or worth the time if you can DIY.

I'd much rather go for a low wattage ClassA amp then the ICEpower stuff in a dedicated setup. Slew rate is king here and the primary impedance of the transformers can be managed with resistor in series/paralell. That's how Koss always did it but using an output transformer in reverse would give you an 8ohm primary.

Great impressions and we really need to come up with a better transformer based solution...

Happy birthday!!

I'm thinking about filling it with BG's and installing the clock as well. I'll probably start on the chassis though after knocking up a simple 7808 PSU. Battery power would be a real contender since the transport doesn't need all that much juice. If you've got any surplus parts from your mods then you know where you can send them... Sadly no. I'd love to try the Pitracer since it is truly unique...

It does sound very impressive indeed so I'm thinking about using batteries in it full time but I'll build a 7808 PSU as well to test it out. What value of resistor did you use for the display led and did you do the full mods? Right now I'm using it stock except I removed everything except the PSU reservoir cap and the digital output doesn't have any resistors on it.

Ehhh ok... In the mean time it is working just fine off a PC918 (huge 6volt) battery plugged into the computer rig. Very nice sound so far...

That one is a bit over the top. I have access to quite a bit of scrap wood so I'll probably use some of that as a chassis with a laser cut top panel.

Ewwww...

It could be a fun project but the weak ISK is killing me so it will be that much more expensive to do. Should be nice and compact though when all is said and done.

I'm fairly sure that he's just an idiot...

I have a feeling that you will be getting a few PM's about this one. It was a complete impulse buy though since I had made a mental note of the model number and then found a bunch of them at a local audio store today. Time to read that massive thread...

I hate blogs so not going to happen. It's amazing how stupid people can be while baking and that goes double for chefs who just don't have a clue. Last week I watched one throw the yeast, garlic and salt in a pot of 80

JVC RC-EZ31 boombox... time for some DIY transport fun

We don't have any sourdough up here since our baking traditions are very German with a lot of sugar thrown in for good measure. I do use it as an extra component in some types of bread but then it comes in a bag from Germany or a bottle from Austria. This stuff works very well for some of the rye breads we make but I also use it to change the texture of the bread foam in some other types. Throw in a few chosen enzymes, the right amount of salt and yeast and let the bread settle in a cooler over night for a god-like taste.

It's an Oracle transport and not CEC.

The crust is a mess (poor quality flour perhaps or lack of gluten) and the oven used to bake that was very poor indeed as can be seen by the lack of shine. A Danish rye bread I used to make could work as a mirror... I do have some pics but they are all at work but I'll try to remember to email some to myself. No pictures and I've sold that T1 already. It's just replacing the connectors and using some better wires so not hard at all.

Happy birthday dad!!! (pabbi means dad in Icelandic)

I would never make something that looked that bad. Now I really need something to eat...

The whole ear piece is floating so you can have the cable pointing any way you want. The pads also rotate independent of the drivers for the perfect fit. You could have those 90 buns that I slightly burned this morning. This is what happens when one isn't paying attention to what is says on the oven's LCD screen... I haven't burned anything in a long time Glad you like them.

The quality is indeed crap on the new speakers and the dealers aren't happy. It's tough to sell a product you know will not last 5-10 years in regular use... If there was any talent even close to that of PJW's left at Quad then they could be making stunning speakers. I'd start off by perfecting the sphere ESL and put it into production... Sucks to be you then...

Very good to know that. The Mk2 cover has patented "boom, boom bass" and we don't like that. My family owns it but my brother and I run it since nobody else wants to. It isn't for everybody to go to work at 3am but one gets used to it. You need to remove the pads and the the black aluminum plate that protects the driver to access the port. There is a reason why Stax put in a port (to allow the ear side to breath and "fix" the fart) but that doesn't mean they should have done it. They also raised the height of the earpads which is a big no,no when it comes to planars. Stax doing a lot of things wrong these days and it is almost as if they didn't understand what they were doing wrong. Similar things happened at Quad when they made the 988/989 series from the ESL63 since they didn't know enough to fix the right bits and made the speakers worse. It could be that some of the old engineers have retired and some noobs are messing with designs they don't understand. Well they could also just be deaf...

It's very bad but we'll get through it. The banks have gone bankrupt () and the state taken over their domestic operations by establishing new corporate entities. That means billions lost for both share holders and creditors. There is also next to no foreign currency to be had in the country these days but this will get better next week. I've heard of a few T2's burning up with shorted transformers or nice charred bits on the PCB. Darth's second T2 fried some of the input circuitry due to a short so these are very fragile amps indeed. A lot of volts floating around, just looking for a nice clean route to ground. The old BH boards also have a fatal flaw that have claimed at least two amps that I know of. The port is in the cable entry which is covered by a small "plug" on the Mk1 (same material as the drivers resin shell) but it is partially open on the Mk2. If you used the cover of the Mk2 cable entry then you opened up the port and created a nice "boom,boom" bass effect. Here is the plug next to the Mk1 earpiece: I'm keeping the funds in the US and Europe while all of this blows over. I own a bakery so I can just make my own pasta if I need to... We've lived through far worse then this and come out on top so I'm not worried at all.

The problem with the Mk1 is twofold, the cable entry doesn't flex enough so the cable can break and since it is so stiff some of the force is transmitted inside the headphone and can break the delicate ribbon wires. A Mk2 cable will work just fine if you ever need a replacement. Yeah, with the Icelandic economy in the shit I'm glad I didn't buy it.