spritzer

Kevin has sent me all the pics now and well...I'm just shocked how bad the T8000 is. Now the circuit is blahhh to say the least and how exactly were Stax working on this for 3 years? Somebody looked at the stuff they already had three years ago and then remembered it again 6 months ago? I mean nothing is new here and that even extends to how this is built. Most of the innovation is just because of necessity while the rest could just have been used in the T1 from 1987. Seriously, links on a modern pcb with surface mount parts?

Thanks for all the well wishes. I had a lovely trip to Bristol and Bath with my gf. She had never been to the UK before so it was a lot of fun to see her respond to the "english" spoken there...

Happy belated birthday my fellow baker boy...

Thanks. I'm glad my own birthday present from me to me is bringing Kevin joy.

One note, it's a bad idea to twist the output wires on any electrostatic amp. This adds to the over all system capacitance which is bad.

Cool!

Yeah, it is very run of the mill and reception is "mixed" to say the least. The guy I bought this one off, sold it after only two hours. Simply didn't like it and kept his other Stax amps.

Isn't that always the case? It's all about the lube...

Happy Birthday little one!!

Given the garbage that is their other products...an Egmont? Seriously, high gain tubes, AC coupled but with a DC coupled output stage and horribly overpriced like the rest of their shit?

The newer driver. The "gold" applies to both black and white units as the original SR-5's had silver plates.

The SR-Omega pads are custom made to my specs, not something you can just find.

Happy Birthday my friend!!

I've always wanted to go to a hamfest...

I forget which pads but I bought a pile of them two years ago. Just look on ebay by the size and you should find some. I just bought the amp so I dunno but it will be first shipped to Kevin so expect silly high res pictures soon. What I'm hearing through the mafia is not good though but I'll wait for it to arrive. I also bought a 100V amp on purpose so that we would know if it could be rewired. If Stax are being assholes then I'll just install a new transformer. Hell then I could actually regulate the PSU...

There are also similar pads on ebay which work much better than the old Stax stuff. In other news, I just bought the first T8000 to hit the used market. Used for a couple of hours and then sold...yeah bodes well for the new flagship...

He will have it soon.

Yeah, I'll do some further testing with the insulation tester tomorrow. I have the Uni-T UT-512 and who knew Uni-T made something usable? Their meters are just garbage but this is kinda nice. It does complain a bit at 2500V but nothing too serious.

I think that might be true. I'm having some truly bizarre issues with an old Stax amp and let's just say that it put 120VAC on the chassis. I connect a source and boom!! I got a slight tingle but that's it.

Metcal for life.

Blowing it all up is half the fun. One amp recently tried to kill me which is less fun but still enjoyable...

Yeah, they should be. I think it was only the SRM-1 where there are major differences between the Mk1 and the Mk2. Really two different amps.

The cap on the bias supply output is a big no-no these days so a 4M7 resistor after that is what I've usually done. Good that you added the 5K1 resistors though. You are right that this isn't for us so adding a small switcher to power the front end would be overkill. One other "wrinkle" to consider are the first and second generation T1's. Yours is the much more common second (which Stax called "new T1") but I've never had one of the earlier ones. The circuitry seems to be a bit different but I'm not sure what they changed.

Well I wouldn't call this close to the KGDT/KGST given how fucked the psu is and the weird way Stax adapt the circuits. The LV supply is something that has to be changed though, it's derived off the HV rails (see the large power resistors in there) and has to go. I haven't seen the article but I hope you touched on and modified the bias supply as it has no place with modern Stax sets.

The data from owners here is about 100km of range in Icelandic weather so not great but given the cost of the cars and the cost to run them... it's not bad.