spritzer

It pretty much had to be an Egmont unless it used some obscure dissimilar dual triode. I might modify it and add a stage if there are any tubes that fit the octal socket and draw about 0.3A of filament current. Not that great. I've only tried it on my test bench with 207's but coming off my usual diet there of Carbon's, KGSSHV's and KGST's...it's not that good. Very weak bass and top end performance, sounds slightly "vague" which is probably due to the massive offset on the output. They are proper VU meters with a drive circuit hidden underneath the main PCB. I'll try to take some pics today to show how it works. There is no hum at all but I'm not happy with the common heater (center tapped) for this thing. It is running the cathodes at -380VDC so any heater/cathode barrier is long gone

Well thing has arrived: When it showed up it didn't work and the balance input still doesn't work. This is cheap...and I mean cheap. The chassis work is beyond crappy and when it arrived both volume controls were loose. Circuit wise it is really just an Egmont with a 10M90 plate load and a tale current source for the input stage. Some huge omissions though such as any way to balance or control the offset of the amp.

Thanks for this guys. I had lovely day with great food and even better people. The weather was perfect too and even though it is midnight, the sun is still shining.

The diaphragm looks exactly like that of Stax or even the HE60. Slight haze to it but other than that there is nothing. I'm sure the whole gold plated diaphragm was a type from german and they were always referring to the stators. If I open them up again then I can take some measurements. I'm sure the glass is a factor but the drivers also bear all the marks of massive QC issues. Spacers all over the place...

Happy Birthday Bakerboy!!

Ok...I had an interesting morning. It isn't every day that one takes apart HE90 drivers. Sorry no picks as I was too freaked out while handling something so delicate and well...fucking unobtainium. These were from the original production run so they needed some cleaning and one driver was imbalanced. Let's discuss how they were made... First of, the actual stators are indeed glass with gold deposits on them. The connections to them couldn't be soldered so they have adapter plates on them which hold the dust covers in place. The diaphragm is held in place with aluminum spacers and they are actually not glued together so access is excellent. Be warned though that there are small plastic spacers all over the fucking place so I'd advise against opening these up. The diaphragms are indeed not gold plated and they have a lot of tension on them. Now for the imbalance, the offending driver had the diaphragms completely fused into one of the stators. It had been this way for a while as the hole pattern of the driver was imprinted onto the plastic film. I slowly peeled them apart and recoated the diaphragm on both sides and now they work perfectly. There was a small hole where the drivers had arced through but it has very little impact on the performance. Small amount of noise from time to time but nothing as bad as an old Lambda Signature. The other driver might need a new coating as well as it seems to have some charge migration issues so that will be easy to sort out.

I'd be happy to store it. Plenty of space here!!

I think Kerry needs a proper reflow oven...

In other news, I just got some used HE90 drivers for my frames. I don't think the electrostatic museum is complete without an Orpheus... They have some slight channel imbalance which I'll have to look into but I think they are mostly made out of glass as Senn always stated. Gold plated diaphragm is likely BS but the black plate which holds the drivers is certainly glass and it has the same edge finish as the stators. The spacers are clear though so might be some form of plastic. Thanks. The team did just receive a hero's welcome with the downtown area full of people. http://www.ruv.is/frett/sjadu-otrulegar-mottokur-a-arnarholi That's a lot of people... Yup...he's probably right... My issue is the utter stupidity of not adhering to the standard set by Stax. King Sound certainly made their own cables and sockets, it's just too bad they suck so bad. Stick with the 1200Vppss standard. If Stax have been able to do so since 1982 how come they can't do it?

The spacer is certainly too thick or the stator design is completely wrong.

Ouch...that is not good!! The King Sound were some of the worst electrostatics I've ever tried. They tick virtually every box in the "wtf were the thinking" list.

I'm sure you can also find something on Aliexpress for a fraction of that price.

Also check out the Electromod page in the UK with the weak pound these days.

The black color does hide the terrible layout and lack of a ground plane...

No, nothing commercial. I have some modules here that are 12VDC to ~230VDC and they can be placed into a +/- setup but this stuff is rare. Also not anything like TKD Lambda quality.

No, nothing commercial. I have some modules here that are 12VDC to ~230VDC and they can be placed into a +/- setup but this stuff is rare. Also not anything like TKD Lambda quality.

The cables don't have a serial number

You can get great stuff made in China, no doubt about that. That being said, having reworked some Cavalli PCB's they are the cheapest crap Imagineering offer. Assembly is clearly done in China and probably testing as well (notice the test header on the PCB) but that is all automated. The parts chosen and the design matter a whole lot more.

A two channel super symmetry dynalo would fit in that chassis with SMD parts.

But you just install a switch which grounds the - input for SE. Hell, just make two XLR plugs with pins 1 and 3 tied internally.

Yeah but the LC was intended as a gateway drug so if you buy another amp then you get a discount, hence the numbers are much lower. Also how many have or will be returned for servicing due to the crap design? All of this adds massively to the cost.

I know...

Why are you using the phase splitter? This isn't a Cavalli amp, there is no need for it.

If you have minimal running costs then 700K at a decent markup (kinda on the excessive side for the LC...) but we know that this is really the third Cavalli Audio as he's run it into the ground two times. He always needs new investment to stay afloat so the running costs clearly aren't low. Also how many of those units resulted in massive discounts on other items and thus last revenue?

I think it is tied to the servo but I can't be sure. Too lazy to look for the schematics...