jwzhan

wow. That is a tight build nicely done and the order status page looks awesome. They even have names displayed. I just finished building my new computer, so I probably won't need another one soon, but now I know where I'll recommend people to!

Seriously, we like Ti and we respect what he is doing, but this is not AMB. We don't hand things to people. Everything you need IS in here. EU or US, there is NO diference in the build. If you don't make reasonable amount of effort, why should we put our effort in to help you? Most of us here are not electrical engineers, we learn things the hard way and we put our experiences in the thread. All you have to do is to read them and you are saying it's too much work? Really? This community has become a lot more tolerant to new members, but we can only do so much. We are no baby sitters.

500VA is excessive for KGSSHV. 200VA is probably already way overkill. Many of us just use about 150VA transfo and it's just fine. All those wires has to fit somewhere. If it's not in the width, it's going to be the height. It's not going to be a small transfo that's for sure. Wiring is discussed multiple times in this thread. You probably can't read through 20 pages of this thread without seeing someone mentioning it. You are probably in the wrong place if you didn't read the entire thread before taking on this project.

Belated Happy Birthday! It was very nice meeting you last meet.

Now come to look at it, yes, it does look more like that than shorting via the cap.... That didn't come to mind first tho, because it seemed more unlikely to me since I presume that the traces are laid out in similar fashion to the normal version just more compated and no one has reported (or I haven't seen any) that the traces are directly shorting to ground without a potential path. If that is the case.... it might not be good... since there are quite a few traces that are carrying similar voltage. And if it happens to one board, it might very well happen to other boards... By the way, right after the diode bridge, it's more like close to 700V than 500V.

Well... at last I wasn't the only guy with the problem.... Mine only shorted once tho, and it was more like BOOM than popping, but it didn't look that bad. I followed Birgir's advice to star ground everything on the PSU board. (IEC ground to PSU; AMP to PSU; Case to PSU, Input and pot to PSU) It doesn't have any noise whatsoever. The problem tho is finding enough place to ground on the PSU.

oh man. I feel bad that I missed it. Belated happy birthday tkam! Thank you for everything!

Here is the link again. I'm planning to close the GB next weekend. There haven't been a whole lot of people asking me yet, but it's fine, since Satodenki doesn't have minimum order requirement or high quantity discount. Just remember tho, this is going to be the only GB I'll do for you guys, so take advantage of it while you can.

Huge thumbs up to FPE! They provided me with an overnight ups label free of cost, took one day to finish the re-fab, and mailed it back immediately via overnight ups again. Turn around time was merely 2 days! That'a also including my added fabrication to deepen one of the the cavities, which they only charged $3 for. That's not even enough to cover the shipping! I wish CamExpert did the same with their mistakes. I'm definately only going with FPE from now on.

For some reason.... both Camepert and FPE managed to mess up my order.... Because of the screw up camexpert did with my KGSSHV panels, I went with FPE for my Balanced Dynahi panels... All the holes that are drilled are perfect... but they forgot a hole! They didn't drilled the key slot for the pot! Now the pot sits too high and the threaded portion is blocked by the panel aka can't be tighten down. E-mailing them about it now... why does this kind of things keep happening to me... why can't they just read the files as they are...

I'm looking to place the order either at the end of this month or the beginning of next month. Also, this will likely be the only group buy that I'll ever do... I actually got all the parts I need from the test batch, so this group buy is solely for the benefit of the community. Some info on the process. My friend will go to the physical store to buy the parts and mail them to me via EMS. I'll then distribute the parts via USPS or whatever way you choose. He can also mail the parts via EMS directly to you at the actual cost. EMS to the states for my test batch was $15 insurance and tracking included.

So, I check the HV parts and they checked out. I'm getting a group buy together. Anyone who wants parts from Satodenki can send me a PM and I'll get a googledoc with price up after I get the first few PMs. Here is the link to the site. Final price for my first order that I got was about 45% of the cost if I bought from bdent.

Those are very large switchers.... why not just go linear like sigma 22... or the original PSU. You certainly have the room for that...

Yeah, I got the kit from him roughly a week after the post. It seemed to be packed in a hurry tho. Nothing is labeled and all the components are just mixed in a single bag.... Nothing was missing, so I guess it's fine. Also, I'm buying parts from Satodenki through a friend of mine, since deadlylover seems to be not doing it now. I just bought some parts including 2SK216, 2SJ79, 2SA1968LS, 2SC4686A and some Dynahi parts. He is shipping them out this week via EMS and I should have them by next week. If they are good, I'll get a group buy together. Price will be the actual shipped price + 10% fee for him. The final price is still going to be 50% of BDent's. I will report back.

You forgot the Final Audio Muramasa VIII. That thing costs $8000+ and therefore must be 60% better than SR-009.

Thanks for the advice. The amp board that I'm using is the off-board version. I did have the pots parallel with the 500 ohm turned to max resistance. I didn't set the pots at the input to the middle tho. I'll try that.

The amp section is giving me trouble. I have only tested one amp and it was giving me pretty weird value (I don't remember the exact value now.) The LED off the negative rail is very bright and the negative rail measured something like -0.8V. The LED off the positive rail is very dim and flickers when the amp is powering off. The positive rail measured +30V. I turned it on once for testing and haven't turned it on since. I figured that whatever is dropping the voltage is getting hot very fast and keep turning it on without knowing the reason isn't a good idea. I did test the PSU output tho. It gave me the correct +30 and -30 when disconnected from the amp. Like how I do with other things.... I made a LTSpice model for the amp.... I couldn't get the negative rail to drop like that no matter what I tried... weird... I guess I will have to turn it back on for more measurements now. I'm praying that the other amp board won't give me any trouble.

Happy birthday!

but it's not a Krell. I'm planning to build a SE version just to see how good krell is and also for fun of course. I'll keep it simple, not fancy engraving, just the very basic, and the cost should be under $600 total.

someone over at a Chinese DIY site has a working KSA5 clone based on the schematic Kevin posted. He used his own boards, replaced mpsa06/mpsa56 with BC546/BC556, and changed the cap values a bit. He seems to like the sound (obviously.) Right now.. he is playing with different caps. Here is the link.

Very nice! How closely are the transistors matched?

Well alomost all 78XX and 79XX today have tab connected to ground, so it's not a safety hazard per se. Grounding problem, however, is an entirely different matter. my bad, 78XX has tab connected to ground while 79XX has it connected to input.

It's a bad idea to solder the voltage reference in there as those are very easily damaged. If you read previous posts, you can see that I had a strange problem with mine. Do what Birgir said. clean those nasty stuff off and tape it up with a small piece of kapton or seal it with epoxy. Pull all active components out and test them individually. Also... I can see quite a few very very large balls of solder.... come on... clean those shit up.... even if they aren't arcing right now, they will in the future for sure. I would highly recommend after the soldering job, go back and add some quality flux to every joint and reheat them to make them all nice, smooth, and shinny. If you can make the solder just seep through a little to the other side of the board all the better, but not like those balls of solder tho. And good luck!

Switched the WD 320G 5400rpm HDD in my laptop to Samsung 256G 840pro SSD. also swapped out the optical drive to HDD caddy with Hitachi 1T 7200rpm HDD. System is super fast now. My laptop should be good for another 2~3 years.

deadlylover was planning on some group buy from satodenki, but don't know when that's actually going to take place... I surely want some of those 1968s and 79/216s I really do wonder how to get that much solder to seep through the hole.... I mean... sometimes I try to have solder seep through a little to the other side but it really takes quite a bit from the iron...