crappyjones123

whatever happened to your sds, al?

wonder if thats even possible - anyone being worse than you that is. for me the journey is not as accomplished as some of the other folk namely ^ here. started with a planatronics gaming headset. gave it to my mom for mic duty to talk with people in india. purchased a medusa gaming headset. sold it. purchased the hd555. sold it. purchased the hd595. sold it. purchased an auzentech prelude. sold it. purchased a little dot mk v. sold it. purchased the hd650. sold it. purchased igrados. sold them. purchased shitty sony iems. sold them. received crossroads iems from mike. gave them away. received crossroads portable amp from mike. gave that away. purchased a nugget audio beta 22. sold it (not sure why). purchased an ic from nugget audio. still have it. purchased a single power audio extreme. oh now i remember why i sold the beta. currently being repaired. purchased hd650s again. purchased grado sr 60s. purchased parts for 4 cmoys. built 4 cmoys (2 of which work) that now sit on my shelf. gave one to my sister and she laughed at how ugly it looked and she would never carry it around because she cares too much to look fashionable. blahblahblah. plans for 2009. purchase a pico dac. sell everything except sr 60s and maybe the hd650s. purchase a mini3 or an ec/ss. purchase a speaker rig. (i hate you mike...your damn disease is contagious) didnt think my list would be that long =/ i guess i didnt spend as much money as some other folk.

AND she doesnt look angry like some of his other projects. exact opposite of the menace id say. lovely picture nate.

finally caught the fucker in the act. this is a recording of what i hear in the left channel when the amp decides to behave poorly. right channel moves along just fine. [ame=http://files.filefront.com/static+noise2wav/;12669370;/fileinfo.html]static_noise2.wav - FileFront.com[/ame]

so just got home from mikes place after a great little mini meet. and of course the amp isnt going to give out at his place. the left channel is not producing any sound at all. nil. nada. no sound out of the left channel. im guessing the movement of the amp probably knocked around whatever was loose and made a good enough contact until it was moved again. the amp worked fine for the few minutes it was used at mikes house but now there is no sound in the left channel. only thing i can think of doing now is opening it up and taking tons of pictures and posting them to see if anyone can recognise a fault right away. fucking thing never dies when i have people around and the moment i get home and plug it in again...boom no left channel. love this amp when it does work but hate it at times like these.

i didnt say or insinuate they werent. only that the "research and development" on beta 22 has already been done. now if they were to make it a wee bit nicer and add some headroom flavor to it and throw it in a super nice chassis then id say that a lot of people would go for it. again, im just a mathematician and extremely myopic so i dont know much about market dynamics and what not. im sure tyll would probably be better suited to answer such a question. but given its history i think a beta would do very well in the audiophile market given its ability as a headphone and a speaker amp in one chassis. that said if headroom wants to make some brand new, i doubt ill understand any of what they will be doing with words like solid state and fully discrete but im sure ill probably like the sound they make good luck with everything tyll.

done

if you wanna do that you are welcome to. ill be home around 9pm tonight and later tomorrow night. but saturday i will most probably be home. if i do step out to go to school i will drop the amp at your place. if you feel like taking a drive around to my neighborhood i leave that up to you as well. we can talk about it later.

it would have to be after monday morning mike. ive already wasted too much time on this amp and as a result ive fallen behind at school. last final is on monday and then im free. ps. thanks a ton for the offer.

well piss, took the amp to the guy at my school and the left channel didnt die. we let the music play for 30 minutes + and nothing. strong as ever. perhaps a mini meet at mike will make the amp die again. its stupid to wish the sound to die but for some reason i feel that its better to have a problem for certain than to have an intermittent one. anyhow, the guy didnt want to open it up and look inside because he said that he would undoubtedly scratch the case in the process. after flecom, im not sure what other avenues i have besides sending it back to mikhail. last suggestions welcome.

just spoke with a few guys at the ee lab and they all pointed to this guy on campus who works in the broadcasting dept who seems to know whats going on. he things its a capacitor thats leaking which is why it heats up and then the channel cuts out. we shall see tomorrow. taking in the amp to him to see if he can do anything with it. wish me luck.

im so buying those when they come out. wonder how they would sound with the extreme

yes, i finally have some kind of indication that i am not completely insane. the problem with the left channel is consistent now. 4th time i have turned on the amp and it has given me the bloop sound followed by either silence or noise in the left channel ONLY. no longer going to use the amp unless i can show it to someone who can open it up and troubleshoot it. the problem occurs in the left channel only. i tried a tung-sol 6sn7 tube with ge 5998s and all filaments in all 3 tubes were glowing just as that "bloop" happened. only this time instead of the left channel just producing no sound at all, produced that plastic bag in the wind kinda sound that i mentioned in my very first post. i tested that particular tube before i put it in the amp and it read ~80 on the heathkit tester (well into the "good" region). i may or may not be correct in this assumption but i have come to think that the problem is most certainly with the amp and not the tubes since its always just the left channel with *any* tube and it happens about the same amount of time after i turn on the amp (roughly 5 minutes if even that). one similarity between what i just heard now and what i heard when i first had this problem was that the plastic bag rustling sound either grew louder or seemed to be getting closer to my ear with time. i wasnt able to tell the difference. now that i know that there is a consistent problem, i wouldnt mind having any local people having a listen to the amp anytime after the 8th (my last final). i can bring it over anytime/anyday after the 8th. just didnt want to have someone listen to the amp when it intermittently sounded fine and conclude i was making this all up. ps. with the 2c51 tubes, the sound just goes away after the bloop. with the 6sn7 tubes the plastic bag sound comes in right after the bloop and keeps getting louder with time.

can i have an office in the team? cj for pres in the next elections.

nate, i will try to look again tonight. im using a 2c51 tube and they are small enough as is, the filament is very hard to see. ill try with the lights turned off later. too much light in my room right now. i tried listening to the amp earlier today on two separate occasions. both times about 5 minutes into the first song, the left channel doesnt dim and then then die out...it just goes away after a little "bloop" sound. the right channel goes strong as ever but no sound out of the left channel after that "bloop" sound. i will check the filament later and report on it.

headroom beta 22s? who doesnt want a beta?

wonder how much shit im going to get for this post...*flame suit on* so upon dan's most valuable of advice, i stole the $30 dvd player from downstairs and tried it as a source to the extreme. lets just say that i didnt actually hear any static that im guessing the laptop was introducing. no annoying high pitched whiny noises. no plastic bag noises so far. bass was MUCH leaner. lacking tightness but much leaner. MUCH more detailed sound. highs were a problem with me but that i think is the source's fault. very very warm inviting sound otherwise. HOWEVER, after about 3 minutes of use, there was absolutely no sound in the left channel. my roommate was listening to something and he complained that the sound in the left channel slowly just died out. the volume just kept dipping until you could hear it no more. i turned off the amp for about an hour and then tried it once more before going to bed, and after about 15 minutes both channels were going strong. i tested the initially thought to be dead tubes with a heathkit tc-2 tester and they all read very well. going to go to oz later during winter break to make sure the old heathkit wasnt lying. i havent come to the conclusion though that there is certainly something off about the amp since now i have at least somewhat reliable confirmation of the tubes being ok. if it were a tube issue, i think reseating tubes or changing their positions would have gotten rid of it but with the no sound thing having happened twice now and the plastic bag sound happened twice ONLY IN THE LEFT CHANNEL makes me doubt all is well inside the amp. ill ask the gentleman at the ee lab to see if he has worked with any tube equipment previously and if he can take a look inside the amp to make sure all the connections are solid and no loose wires are floating around. if he gives me the ok then i guess i can message flecom or someone else who wants to take a crack at troubleshooting this left channel nonsense. the past two hours have made me realise that i will be buying a new source fairly quickly. perhaps i could save all the money i make over the next month and just buy the exemplar 2900 from mike a few weeks from now who knew anything besides a laptop would make the sound so much better /runs away and hides.

i got nothing to sell or buy, but can i get into the exchange of monies program too?

jebus that looks awesome. congrats vicki!

ok, i think ive really screwed things up now - made the queen mad. ill see if mike hasnt been severely ticked off. need to get a hold of dom to get my pcdp back. he still has it from tampa.

HOLY CRAP ITS GENE'S BIRTHDAY!!! woohoo!!! have a great day sir. hope you have countless more to celebrate!

just sold the mullard. hopefully that can cover the cost of the shipping to mikhail if that route is to be taken. i am planning on sending frank a message to see if he can help. dont know if the amp is still under warranty. if it is then id rather just send it to mikhail regardless of how much time it takes. i havent heard of many cases where amps came back unfixed from him.

i apologise if i dont like to take people for granted and have them tote around my gear and do my work for me. while i understand and fully realize that mike had no hidden agenda and offered to take my amp and tubes to troubleshoot with oz, i feel uncomfortable having him do that on my behalf. yes, i should accept kind gestures like his but things would probably be different if i had a different upbringing. i apologise if it makes me seem stubborn and/or stupid, it is just part of who i am. thanks again for everyones help. i will contact mikhail and just let him deal with the amp issues if there really are any. this thread has gone long enough already.

fuck, the noise in the left channel is back with a rca tube now. only difference is it sounds like its riding a sin wave. noise starts building, raises and then calms down. and then starts again. just when i had almost started believing mike in that it might just have been a user error 3 different tubes have caused this now...amp issue or just dead tubes?

none of the tubes were dead quiet from the ones i tried. all of them started exhibiting noise at the 12 o'clock position. the volume knob starts at the 7 o'clock position and ends at the 5 o'clock position. dont know if that says anything.