DefQon

It's not so much about your wallet, it's more about the wait times (which I completely understand the accountable factors in lead and wait times). I was 90% close to ordering one but my local dealer wants nearly $9k of smackaroos for the RK50 pot iteration and if I ordered through Head-amp I save big $$ (including shipping costs) but the wait times a downer for me as I have no patience to wait for things. That said is the Mullard XF2's still the best of the EL34's equiv's for the BHSE? I've read reports that a good quad of 6CA7's give a bit more detail and that the Groove Tube EL34's are mimicked to be alike the XF2's...

@complin: True, H-Fi has changed a lot given those 2004 - 2008 days when I use to lurk then finally registering years later. Funny thing is when Anakchan banned me because he wanted me to agree to H-fi's Posting Guidelines over a single post made by somebody else (which I did not respond to with a yes or no) I told him have you ever wondered why old timers i.e the true contributors from years and years back just pack up there bags and leave without any goodbye or whatever (i.e Uncle Erik comes to mind), he didn't respond to that. I've seen and read posts on other big reputable forums and not just restricted to audio stuff refer Jude and head-fi as just a big market place filled with lies, hype, shills and censorship, a big major fuck you given to those that really contribute informative facts otherwise you're agreeing to there censorship if you don't agree with them, now the place is full of shit. I think they should update there posting guidelines or forum terms and conditions to have something along the lines, "this forum runs on an explicit level of censorship and frequent alteration and moderation of post including removal of post is endorsed too see fit in Jude's views so it does not ruin sponsorship income and reputation". For those interested (sorry grawk): http://www.head-fi.org/t/684613/most-underrated-and-overrated-headphone-for-a-bit-of-fun/330#post_10366422 I got banned over my response to this post saying it is without common sense of logic that people determine conclusively how a high end finicky headphone is deemed as overrated because the person in the post listened to them through the H/out on a $100 cdp in a store/meet for less then 20 minutes, funny thing is within a few hours I had 3 other long term posters agreeing to me and about 6 people thanking my post before this got all deleted with a warning from sand pounder 3 weeks prior to my ban. Such is life. Sigh

Sometimes in critical circuits, matching idss values isn't enough. You perform a diode test to match them.

Kind of use to it now, not the first time I've escaped near death. I remember enthusiastically looking at the hot iron wires in my toaster while it was on 10-12 years ago and thought to myself, what would happen if I poked it with a full stainless steel butter knife (the type with no insulated handle), suffice to say I got zapped, burnt the toaster and tripped the house safe switch. My toast turned out fine though. Guess the next time I do something with electronics the safety switch won't be triggered.

I see Birgir is MOT now on the other site, guess he can't be as open about other manufacturers and amp designs as before. Btw just read this Mike Mercer review. To be honest I don't think this guy has ever said anything bad about anything, be it a good or bad amp, think he likes anything and everything. I remember reading his Meet impressions and this was my conclusive opinion about him, shill or no shill. Kind of funny like an overwhelmed kid given all sorts of candy.

I feel your pain when you run out of parts you need for building and troubleshooting in case you damage stuff, I blew up 2 500v coupling caps accidentally shorting them with the wrong polarity in a 300B amp I was working on the other day 3 in the morning with half a litre of vodka in my system, good thing the house had a safety switch.

I think you fried just the shorted opamp, I would swap the good opamp into the shorted socket and measure the offset if it is drifting between 7-12mV as you're stating with the shorted opamp.

Would you consider the b24 ok? I was thinking of putting that on my build list so I have something to compare to the F5 when I'm done.

Or use power conditioners at least, a cable by itself doesn't filter anything that's proven physics and science no matter how many EMI ferrite beads/thick gauge or litz twisted pairs you do, if the AC is severely dirty then there is no stopping it from going in your equipment, a conditioner or power plant would do the most benefit. Or you can stock yourself a shit load of ESD paper and wrap everything with it - a Patrick82 recommendation to improve sound and reduce background noise....

They look big 2, supposedly real room heaters. Look's like Kevin's got more crazy designs that haven't been released out in the wild.

Do I see 845's being mentioned in that schematic? Would drive up the cost in no time flat with a properly done 845 based amp.

Good job, with the help from wachara I also restored a completely dead silent SR-3N in the Stax thread here using the anti-static gel solution but since then have decided to make the fix permanent by using ESL speaker repair kit liquid compound from a local distributor.

I've always looked at Woo as nice looking and excellent quality chassis and build quality, but subpar sound performance and questionable designs (Spritzer has only covered the icing of the cake with the problems). A few Woo amps I've heard had some background noise and humming issues. I liked the Stratus on the other hand with my old modded HD800's. Haven't heard enough amp's to criticise DNA's construction, internal build and design ethics.

+1. Would love to build me a Liquid Glass amplifier.

DAC vs DAP though. Although I haven't heard the AK240 I can't see it justify the asking price. Not as bad as the Tera player though, overpriced POS at best.

Never been wow'd by any Chords past DAC's and fairly disappointed with the 64 performance to the asking price ratio so have high doubts the Hugo is that "good" (after you minus all the BS on the other site etc etc).

At least Srajen makes his bs creative on 6moons. I wouldn't be surprised if he invented the useless term PRat.

Funny that some 507 owners on the other site claimed that the 507 sounds warm and lively. Which is BS.

Removing all those el cheapo ceramic caps for at least a Vishay 3382 or Evox/Wima mkp's will bring some improvement to looks and maybe sound.

I is in for GB for mini psu boards. Btw with the weight of that trafo have you noticed any sag with the bottom metal plate? I have one of those cases (I mentioned while back) or it might be a bit bigger from ebay and was planning to turn it into a F5 build but unsure bottom plate (quite thin - about 3mm?) can sustain a heavy 300va trafo in the middle (for that matter that toroid looks about same size as my 300va toroid, heavy 7kilo bastard).

hurrah

Sounds simple enough, what other rare Stax amp you might be after next time?

Well thank fuck finally, the cats out of the bag. It made me cringe reading the Oppo thread over on the other site. Guess my price speculation was about right. Between $600-1200. Should the PM-1 become successful with sales and attention (no doubt it would) Oppo might release another model priced bit higher but Oppo is usually conservative about there pricing to quality/performance factor ratio, so maybe for not so much more.

Mini KGSSHV - do want.