aerius

I wouldn't. I'd build the tube amp I'm using. But you need a surplus shop from which to scrounge parts, else the cost goes up astronomically.

According to this page you only have a 1 in 15,000 chance of dying.

Thrice nailed it. The problem is this, the K340 needs a good balanced amp. Good, balanced, and $300 budget don't belong in the same sentence, you get to pick 2 out of the 3. A $300 balanced amp with a K340 is a waste of your money, and that's what we're telling you. But feel to knock yourself out and do it anyway, just don't come crying to us when it sounds like ass.

Nope. You'll need to check and mark the wires yourself so you know what goes where.

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/ Excerpt: Thoughts? Comments?

Yeah, I own a freakin' Denon from the early to mid 90's, my amp is a bunch of parts on a perfboard, my cables were from the surplus store, but at least I have an RS-1!

I thought I had successfully repressed all memories of that twerp. Unfortunately, I'm mistaken.

$3000 for the Apache? You gotta be shitting me. I guess Ray's really going for the cost of materials times 10 model of retail pricing. Fucking ridiculous.

The problem is lots of people on Head-fi confuse bling gear and high post counts with actual experience. For many of these people, a Grado 325 or RS-1 with a Raptor and Benchmark DAC1 is the best thing they've ever heard, they don't have experience with anything better. If you mention "Cary 300SEI" on Head-fi, most people on Head-fi will go "holy shit 300B this is the best amp ever!!!!11", while people with actual experience will go "meh...". Very few people on Head-fi have actually heard the truly great stuff, and even fewer of them post there since they've grown sick of the toxic atmosphere.

To paraphrase the late Dr. Gizmo, you tried to drive a Porsche 911 off-road and then wondered why it doesn't handle properly.

Looks to be in the ballpark of $1-1.5k depending on the parts used and how fancy you get with the case. I could be a bit on the low side since I haven't priced out capacitors lately.

And hope that its lovely French craftsmanship lets you put it back together...

It's an excellent phono amp, you should definitely get one. Or maybe you can get their pre-amp...

For a Grado amp, the Moon Audio Luna is the best off the shelf amp I've heard, beats my amp, beats the 2 Singlepowers I've heard (PPX3 Slam & MPX3 with 6BL7's), and Biggie's custom job is the only one I know of which is on the same level with Grados without going to a custom directly heated triode build. I posted some impressions in this thread.

Yeah, but that's the MSRP, I'm pretty sure you can find them for a lot less. My local dealer quoted me around $13-14k for the SP-1, brand new. Do it!!!

You're buying speakers which retail for $20k, now is not the time to scrimp on amps.

I've tried it out of an old Technics receiver, it's not bad at all once I mess with the tone controls to get more bass. This is with a record player though, I have no idea how that particular setup would sound with digital since I haven't tried it yet.

It's not a rumour, it is true! In fact, I can feel the vibrations from your K340 from where I live!

Even though they're rather costly, you might want to add the Artemis Labs SP-1 and DP-2 to the list. The former is a SE 300B and the other is a push-pull 2A3 with transformer phase splitters. I haven't been able to do a direct comparison with the Coincident or Wavelength, but I've heard them with the same CD player and very similar turntables, only the speakers & cables were different. Summary, the Artemis gear is scary good, it's top tier stuff along with the Wavelength.

Seriously, the board even gives you a warning when you try to post in a inactive thread. It'll tell you that you're digging up some ancient thread, and then ask if you still want to post in it.

He should've used slugs instead of shot, gotta use the right tool for the job. Slugs will eventually break the lugnut off, shot will just bounce off it.

You managed to hear 2 of the least neutral horns around, well, maybe not quite that unneutral but they're pretty non-neutral as far as horns go and pretty much define the "horn sound". I heard an Uno a long time ago and it was not nearly as coloured as the Klipsch, can't remember too much else about it though since it was so far back.

You mean the games don't already go 5 hours?

Have fun getting that amp stable, you might get lucky and have it work, but more likely than not you'll spend a week or more trying to get the damn thing to stop oscillating, and then still wonder why it doesn't sound right, because it's still oscillating, but at MHz frequencies. High transconductance tubes such as the 5842, WE417A, and especially the 6C45P need damn good grounding and wiring layout, and they may also need to be properly shielded & terminated. Been there, done that, no fun at all. Also, feeding the 5842 off the cathode of the 45 which is biased with a VR tube is not going to help things out, VR tubes go inductive at high frequencies which can lead to all kinds of wonky things. Personally, I'd build Gordon Rankin's Bugle 45(PDF file) for now and then see how things go. Or your could build my P-P ECC40 Amp with 6BL7 output tubes and a yellow instead of blue LED and bump the voltage up to 350V or so for more headroom. It'll run a set of 97dB speakers just fine in a small room so it should have no problems with the even more efficient Duos.

Did anyone manage to identify the headphones been used by the test subjects during the blind test? I think they're crap-ass Sonys, which would go a long way towards explaining why they can't hear a difference.