spritzer

K340... The confused headphone...

You are lucky to pass this off on somebody else. The older pads ar better then the new ones though. Damn environmentally friendly glue... I think the collectoritis has gone into overdrive when you got 8 sets of Lambda pads in July and you've run out...

Yup. It's a shame that so few designers use good drivers with the 300b and stick with the 6SN7 crap. A really cool amp would be 45/300b/845...

I try... Stax detective work is a lot of fun. I spent a bit of money and time trying to figure out if there ever was a SR-2 as Stax doesn't even seem to know and it was indeed a production model. Just a word of warning, replacing those pads can be a bitch!! It can be hard to clean up the old glue and you only get one shot at putting the new ones back on.

The amp is held back by one thing, the super efficient mini transformer that you need to step up the AC. There is a minimum order on them but one of the vendors on HF said he could supply them but never did. Could have been Single Power but I'm not sure

Kinda... I'm listening to them now through the SRM-Xh in and that can be used with a simple 12v battery. No bass boom at all and only slightly compromised soundstage...

They all sound different but the high points IMO are the SR-Lambda, Lambda Signature and the SR-SC1. The Lambda Spirit is damn good for something that can be picked up for 10000YJP used. Ready when you are Boss... I've been going through my collection lately to decide what to sell and there seems to have been a paradigm shift in the Stax sound signature in the begging of the 70's as the sound became drier and with tighter bass. This is apparent in both the amps and adapters form the 60's (SRD-5 and SRA-3S) as they are much warmer and larger then life.

Those extra 25 hours of burn in will make all those "issues" go away... (just posing as a fanboy until one shows up...) If you want a closed portable then the 4070 is the only option IMHO. The 600+ grams feel like the morning breeze on your head...

Nahh.... the SR-007 is better. The SR-Lambdas really shine with the fiber glass removed and a "good" tube amp. They are simply heavenly out of my SRA-3S completely stock. Open and dynamic with just a hint of coloration in the HF. Btw. I still stand by my believe that philodox is indeed deaf since he prefers Lambdas. How is that even possible... ....

I love these old brochures and pamphlets. I have amassed quite a collection my self on everything Stax related. That would increase its output no doubt but how much we'd only know through testing.

I think you can have Sennheiser replace any of the pieces that show any wear so the set will be almost mint. Don't know what they will charge though but I am having the distributor here check out a few things for me.

Thanks for for a great read. It's hilarious how they say that using small transformers mounted in the earcups is indeed a good idea... ... I guess they were copying the Koss ESP6 pamphlets and marketing idea. "Having 2lbs worth of headphone on your head is a pleasant experience". They were also supposed to be used from a normal TRS socket but they did include a speaker cable to TRS adapter just in case.

Thiel are one of the few dynamic manufacturers with any sense to make their own units but it's still childsplay compared to an ESL design. There are formulas for all of this but math and a working driver are two very different things. I haven't heard Final yet but I'm trying to score a cheap set to try out. They look great but the shared bias/distribution box idea is a bad one. Innersound of old when Sanders ran the business was pretty good but the current one is a joke. They stole the company from him and tripled the prices. All ESL's will beam no matter what the sales brochure says. There are two ways to combat this with either the curved panel, which has its own huge problems, and with the staggered arc, which does work but makes the drivers go from complicated to insane. Quad did use a diffuser on the treble panel on the 57 to decrease the beaming but that isn't a good thing either. Most of the design work put into the 63 went into making the phantom point source system work. The problem with M-L is that they aren't focused on performance first. They still use 12um film to have it integrate better with the woofer instead of just designing a better one. I've heard that replacing the film with 3um mylar helps them a lot and that is first on my list when I get a CLS.

Designers are very reluctant to get in the ESL game as it is much harder then order up some drive units, throw together a simple textbook crossover and put it in a fancy box. You have to make everything for the ESL's as there are very few stock options and they take a lot of skill and deep knowledge to get right. That's a step in the right direction but I like the steel frame models more as you can tilt the speakers and have more mass to play with.

That is a perfectly valid point but there aren't any other options out there. The speakers would set you back 3-6k with mods depending on what is done and who does it and for 10k you can have stacked 57's i.e. two speakers each side that make a single line source. You can even go triple or quad stacked... At this price there is nothing that can beat them unless you can snag a newish Sound Lab with the new panels. There is the new RAM speaker but it was just released, Martin Logan and Innersound aren't all that great and Audiostatic has lost its way.

It was never called the "57" by Quad, just The ESL, but after the newer model was released it was added to separate them. They were introduced in '55 and began production in '57 only two years before Stax had finalized the SR-1. The "new" speakers are basically the ESL63 (introduced in 1982 but the design work started in '63) built cheaper and with crappy materials and the "9" models throw on two extra bass panels. Nobody at Quad knows how to design an ESL so they are still making the same stupid mistakes and errors that were present in the original design. They still sound great and do things no multi driver speaker can do. They were also built for normal people and not audiophiles and thats why there are so many of them around. The sad part is that Quad has never made much money from these speaker over the last 50 years so they need to be restored by caring hands to sound like they should. The 57's need to be completely rebuilt with new thinner diaphragms, clamping boards to prevent them from arcing and new stands that raise them higher and present a firm base for the speakers to push against. The 63's and it's later versions need a stiffer housing and to have the drivers completely rebuilt as there is a fatal flaw where they come apart due to cheap glue. My next move after I've collected all the electrostatic headphones I want to own it to start collecting ESL's. I have a set of 63's that are residing at a friends house as I'm getting a fully rebuilt and updated set later on.

A properly restored set is breathtaking but they sure aren't for everybody. They are also incredibly picky...

Did you hear a restored set? I'm going to get some fully restored with 3um diaphragms and other tasty mods. They are IMHO the best speaker ever made though far from being perfect

We will get him back once he's heard a fully optimized SR-007 setup... Resisting the allure of high voltage is futile...

Yes I believe it would but they did make a chrome version once and it looked very nice. I'm all for function over form but the option of something nicer could make them a lot of money.

They use good parts but I'm not so sure about their build techniques and circuits. It's the same with A-S, I mean would it kill them to use something that doesn't look like it housed a radio in WW2?

Ahhh the fun of going against the Head-fi grain...

False results would have been a better way for me to put it. In a perfect DBT when all listeners would have no glue to what they were listening too, would have plenty of time with a large collection of source material and each piece was set up so it would perform to its best ability then we would get a meaningful result. The problem is that the listeners often know what they are listening to as they own the gear, nobody has the time for a lengthy session and there is little chance to set the gear up right i.e. impedance matching and see what kind of cables, filters, supports etc. are needed. This is why people walk away from tests like this with the wrong idea about a component and it is even easy to "doctor" the results if somebody wanted to. Take a CDP with a linear PSU and hook it up to one of those filter thingies and you have severely compromised the performance but the listeners would be none the wiser. He who would control the test wouldn't even have to do it on purpose. The major x-factor in all of this is the experience of the listeners as we all know that most of this "golden eared" stuff comes from experience and how you can "read" what you are hearing. The ability to hear the difference in cables etc. doesn't come from the fact we can hear better but rather that we know what to look for.

I have an Italian amp, the original Audio Analogue Puccini, and it sounds way out of time, warm and pleasant. It's a shame it can't drive electrostatics but it sounds great on the Stax headphones. It's all about the right combination.

What I mean it the move away from the musical and involving sound to sterile and clean. This is mostly due to the technology and not a calculated move as transformers and carbon resistors were abandoned in favor of IC's and metal films. PIO caps have all but disappeared in favor of the plastic kind and everything is PCB based instead of P-P. Your CDP is French so no wonder it doesn't conform with the "norm". It is a very warm player so it should mate well with a SS amp. It's all about the balance and that has been lost on so many. I feel so violated...