aerius

A big part of road racing comes down to tactics and drafting, you want to be in the front third of the group so you don't get see-sawed and gapped out of the draft every time the peloton slows for a corner. When you're closer to the back there's a hell of a lot more speed variation as the group bunches up and spreads out, and you'll waste a lot more energy slowing down then accelerating hard to get back into the draft. If you're at the back it's only a matter of time before you get popped off and when that happens you're screwed until you can get a few other riders together and form a paceline. Try to stay with the leaders as long as you can, when you can't do it anymore drop off and latch onto the chase group(s), and when that fails drop back to the main group. Never ride alone if you can help it, for instance if you're in between the lead & chase group, don't blow yourself out trying to maintain position or jump to the lead group, ease up and recover a bit, then join the chase group and let them pull you back up front.

I guess it's respectable for a studio album, I'm much more of fan of his live recordings which is where I think he really shines. The Blue Wild Angel version of "Red House" absolutely kills the one on this album, and of the songs on the album where there's live versions, the live ones are always better. Not necessarily in sound quality, but in the way the band plays and how they jam and make the music really take a life of its own. I'll probably make my own version of the album by replacing as many tracks as I can with live versions.

I have a couple of those which I found in a surplus store and was planning to use as a giant night light. The local surplus suppliers didn't have a suitable transformer so I ended up using a computer PSU to power the filament. The project didn't get very far since I didn't have a socket for the tube and it was entirely put together with clip leads.

If it were, that would be one hell of a close-up shot with those lenses. Cherry tree

802's aren't that bassy, it's the 801's with the 15" woofer that'll really punch out the bass.

Hookers.

If you want an ultra cheap solution, cut the bottom inch or so off some pop cans and fill them plaster or epoxy, this will give you the concave surface for the ball bearings. Overfill the top edges by a bit to cover the sharp edges on the cans, stick a large marble or ball bearing between a set of can bottoms and there's your ball bearing isolation device.

I think it's that along with where the voice coil attaches to the diaphragm. It voice coil is glued about halfway between the centre and outside of the diaphragm, and with the way it's shaped it looks like the centre part would move more than the edges.

Is that tape wrapped around one of the capacitors? At last, I don't feel alone anymore!

The problem is you can't do it for cheap, and the speaker will be a decent sized floorstander. Finding a woofer which matches the efficiency of Lowthers isn't easy, you'll have to go into the pro-audio world (Beyma, 18sound) or a boutique maker like AE Speakers and that is going to cost you. Oh yeah, and they're big, 10" woofer at the absolute minimum, more likely, a 12" or 15" unit. So the speaker is no longer a nice slim box, it's now a big fat box. Then you need to find a tweeter, none of the tweeters from Scanspeak, Focal, SEAS or the usual audiophile companies will have the required efficiency, so you're looking at pro-audio tweeters, ribbons (Beyma, RAAL, Mundorf) or some sort of compression driver/horn combo. Once again, $$$.

X version for the TSM and VSM plus the version immediately before the X, for the VSM I've heard everything from the Gen III onwards. I've heard them in several systems, some better, some worse, but the Merlin sound is always there. My reference is the Living Voice OBX-R2 and Quad ESL-57, a lot of speakers, including many highly regarded ones sound dead or hopelessly coloured next to them. I'm also damn picky with speakers, there's a lot of little things that bug the hell out of me which most people probably wouldn't care about. They'll be fine, I've heard them with a 30W tube amp and they'll still go plenty loud on that. Lowthers are goddamn finicky sumbitches, especially when run full range. If you want to play operas, solo vocals, or jazz at a low to medium volume they are absolutely stunning. But if you start pushing the volume a bit with say, Pavarotti then you get the dreaded Lowther "shout" and it starts going honky. Throw massed choral works at it (O Fortuna from the Carmina Burana for example) and it gets ugly fast. There's a couple guys I know who have a ton of experience with Lowthers, according to one of them the key is to run them as a wide-band midrange from about 500-5000Hz, and removing the whizzer along with a few other modifications. It keeps the midrange goodness while getting rid of most of the colourations and it lets them play a lot louder without distorting.

I can't recommend the Merlin since it sounds pretty dead to me, especially so at lower volume levels. The Lowther isn't that good of a choice either since it needs a larger box to get decent bass, and that runs counter to your size limitations. One speaker I know of that would meet all the criteria is the Oskar Aulos, but I can't say I know how good it'll sound from a couple feet away since i was listening to them from a distance of about 7-8'. The bass isn't as tight as say, a PMC or Harbeth but I didn't find it to be overly loose or boomy either, certainly no worse than a B&W 804 or 805. Another speaker I like which unfotunately doesn't meet the sealed/front vented requirement is the TB2i, it uses a transmission line which exits to the rear. The overall sound is similar to the Harbeth's but it's more lively and works better at lower volumes as well as being more efficient. Once again I'm not sure how they'll work out at your proposed listening distance.

Interesting...the sharp peak in the impedance graph at ~8kHz matches up with a similar peak in the frequency response graph at about the same frequency. I'd suspect this is a resonance of some sort though I'd need to see a cumulative spectral decay plot to be certain.

Yeah, you're right since he did mention he wanted a longish tail pair. Problem is a good LTP can't really be done with the 6C45P using resistors unless you use a negative supply, and if you're going to use a negative supply then you might as well CCS it. I'm not sure a choke on the cathodes would be a good idea with these tubes since they're prone to noise pickup & oscillations, it seems like asking for trouble to me. Personally I don't think a LTP would be the first choice with the 6C45P, and it definitely wouldn't be my first build using the tube. I'd lean towards using a transformer phase-splitter to feed the tubes and run them as a simple P-P pair, I give up a bit in signal balance between the tubes but it makes the rest of the design & build a lot simpler. LED bias on the cathodes, CCS feeding the centre tap on the transformer, and a cap from the centre tap to the cathodes. That's what I've heard as well from various sources, I ran mine at a bit over 20mA and it seemed to be pretty happy there. Apparently it gets pretty temperamental at higher currents.

LED bias, but you'll need to put 2 or 3 LEDs in parallel to get enough current capacity and a small value resistor in front of each one to ensure even current sharing on the LEDs. Same as the picture you linked, just replace the cathode bias resistor with LED bias. There's a couple DIY amps I know of which use this arrangement with a 2:1 (or was it a 4:1?) input transformer in front of the tubes, and a TVC in front of that to set the volume. Using a pot as the volume control will likely require an additional cathode follower stage to drive the miller C on the tubes. I've only played with the 6C45 in SE parafeed mode, it worked but it was darn finicky and I don't have a 'scope so I didn't explore it much. The tubes went back into the parts box and I went back to easier stuff.

Band of Horses - Everything all the Time

Gain shouldn't be an issue with Grados, I'm running a set of 6BL7's in P-P with a Lundahl 1663 which is a 5k:8 ohm transformer to drive my RS-1. On the other hand my CD player has a variable output which goes up to 5V and most of my listening is in the 60-70dB range. My amp is LED cathode biased, it was CCS'd via the transformer centretap but I stole the IXYS 10M45S's for another project, I can't say I notice any difference since my PSU is ridiculously overbuilt. The 6C45 is definitely a step up in difficulty but as long as you have a 'scope you'll be fine. You just need to pay real good attention to your wire routing and use grid stoppers to keep the damn thing from oscillating. And don't forget to tie all the cathode & grid pins together (there are 4 & 2 of them, respectively), leaving one or more floating invites problems.

They're next to useless unless you can cram it right behind whatever you're soldering, which means it won't work well at all if you're doing point to point work or soldering within a chassis. It's ok if you're working on a PCB and can put the thing right up against the board. Back when I worked in the electronics assembly industry we'd use something like this unit where there's a flexible vacuum hose that can be positioned directly over the work being soldered. The vacuum & filter unit goes under the workbench and the hose gets moved around to wherever it's needed, so even if you're working in the middle of a chassis you can put the hose right over it and let it suck away all the fumes. Unfortunately they ain't cheap to say the least.

I've only read the excerpt which appeared in Tennis magazine a few issues back (or was it SI, can't quite remember), man, it must've sucked being Andre as a kid. I thought I had it pretty bad with way my dad was pushing me in tennis when I was young, christ, it does not even compare to what he went through, I probably would've jumped off a bridge. Best part of the excerpt, Andre and Steffi's dads almost getting into a fist fight over what a proper backhand is, fucking hilarious.

Frequency response looks decent, but the harmonic distortion spectrum is one of the worst I can remember seeing. Doesn't look very promising to me. Way too much higher order distortion products for my tastes.

We'll just have to adapt the wisdom of Shakespeare to the problem at hand. The solution is simple; kill all the bankers.

There's actually a reason for that. The banks are hoping that you'll make a big withdrawal or debit from the account soon after the deposit, so they'll hold part or all of it so they can re-arrange the order of your transactions and hopefully ding you with a shitload of overdraft fees. They do that with regular checks, direct deposit paychecks and wire transfers all the fucking time, and in the last year & half or so they've started doing it with cash deposits.

The GF1 and E-P2 have electronic viewfinders, the E-P1 has an optional optical viewfinder which works only with the 17mm lens. I had the E-P1 for a few weeks before I returned it, the clip-on viewfinder was too much of a pain for me to carry around & use, if they could make a built-in viewfinder in a micro 4/3 camera it would be perfect for my needs.