spritzer

For dropping the tough work in somebody else's lap... Like your daddy did.... ...

Just because everybody is doing it doesn't make it right... The true musical truth lies in single driver transducers and simple tube amps. I wished any dynamic could produce the bass of the SR-007 or the 4070. How the 4070 presents bass is really, truly unique...

A quad of NOS 845's costs between 3-6k$ depending on which tubes we are talking about. Good 45's are about a grand and the 300b's would be at least 2k$. That's not really cheap is it?

Bastard...

The trick with the old pads is to try and get all of the glue off with the pads which is easy with the oldest pads but gets harder with the newer versions of glue. I ripped off the pads on my new-ish Airbow SC1 and no amount of solvents could completely clean the baffle. Using chemicals this close to the driver is pretty bad for my ulcer... :'(

That could very well be but none of my headphones are. Planars all the way...

This would be most useful with either one of the Sennheiser HE's as they don't like dust at all. Stax stats are better protected but humidity can kill any one of them.

It's certainly a very confused headphone...

I'd ask EIFL about them as he orders straight from the factory

I'm just trying to mix with the common folk... it won't happen again...

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.