n_maher

Time to find out if the last two hours of tweaking has made any difference...

By a crazy twist of fate I have 4 of these caps (no idea when I ordered them) so PM me your addy and I'll mail them tomorrow.

170W/ch with balanced inputs. They are some of the lower power modules that they sell but more than plenty for what I have planned.

Icepower monoblocks.

Bah, this is a no lose purchase. I bought it at a very fair price and if I can't locate a suitable pair of headphones (read: affordable) I'll pass it along for the same price and be no worse for the wear.

I feel safe saying never. I'll never have that much to throw at headphones unless someone want to trade a pair for a Wadia 830.

Thanks deepak, that would be sweet. Might actually give me time enough to build the monoblocks that will be powering the SRD7.

Indra, Options for DIY DAC's that could be implemented in the same chassis will be pretty limited. And again if it were me I wouldn't put the dac in the same box anyway. If you ever want to upgrade/downgrade/change either component now you're stuck changing both.

I take issue with Hillary Duff being in the top 10. Cute, mebbe, sexy, no.

Probably. Now I'm on the hunt for one of the older Lambda headphones I guess. Care to make a recommendation since I will have access to both the Pro and Normal bias supply? That's really the reason that I picked up the mkII, that flexibility is great.

Thanks for that explanation, Ti.

Stax SRD7mkII

Jebus man, I've been up past midnight for 3 nights straight working on this among other things and pictures of it on my basement floor just aren't going to cut it. Last night I was so spent when I got it done that I just crashed and went to bed at 12:15. I'm going to a couple mild tweaks tonight see if the hum can be further calmed and also the localized heatsinking. Right now after ~30min of use the hot spot in the center of the chassis was running about 190deg F, a fair bit hotter than I'd like for sure. It dissipated very quickly so it's not like the whole chassis is roasting but I wonder what it would have been like after 2 or 3 hrs or with 6528's on the outputs instead of just the 6AS7's. In the end this may point to the amp chassis needing larger more invasive mods or a new chassis altogether. So the plan for tonight is to: 1. Install a ground loop breaker to offer some separation between the PS and Amp grounds. 2. Install several small top-side mounted heatsinks above the larger resistors to help with heat issues. 3. Run the amp for at least an hour as a semi-stress test to make sure that it's ready to ship to FLA tomorrow. 4. If time permits take a few better pictures.

But imagine the research and development that went into figuring out how to do a 4-wire litz braid with 18awg conductors. I mean think about it man, rock stars are only rocking you half the time. The other half they're breathing! And if I didn't think that Jena Labs was enough of an ass-clown operation before this pretty much seals the deal.

Thanks guys, I just added a semi-permanent fix to the grounding issue (so it'd be safe to travel on Friday) and refired it and I think the hum is already a little better by using a wire instead of a jumper. It'll definitely need more attention as it is more than I'd ever accept but hopefully it's not all that intensive a fix. So right now I'm chilling to Feist w/ [2] 5U4GB rectifiers, a Slyvania 6SN7GTB and [2] RCA 6AS7G's and it sounds pretty damn good.

Yes, but since I've heard a total of 2 songs, sourced by my Ipod touch (i'm on the floor in the basement for safety reasons) I'd be hard pressed to make any real judgments at this point. Translation: needs more burn in.

Well, it only took one emergency call to TX and the amp is now working pretty decently. It has a bit of background hum which Pete and I believe is linked to the less than optimal grounding scheme that I have right now. In truth, there was actually an error in the grounding as shown in the pictures that I didn't catch so for a little while there it didn't look like the amp would be doing much in the near future. Thankfully we got that sorted with only minimal sparks, no burns and nothing permanently fubared. I'm guessing the good folks at CanJam won't even notice the hum given how loud meets usually are but it'll be first on my list to address when I get home. Wuhoo! The Menace Lives. Oh, and I'll actually be adding some external heatsinking to the case in before the amp gets shipped to Florida, she does run toasty.

just got home - time to get busy...

Is it true that Mark writes for Positive Feedback? [edit]yup, there his is on the writers page...

Well if that's what it looks like that I've succeeded with my aesthetic vision. In fact the amp and PS will eventually have wood runners along the bottom of the chassis to further the HA-2 lineage although I'll probably be using a different wood. Better pictures to come tonight when I get the whole thing lit up and running.

I know, I can take the ribbing. Dew eet. Otherwise you will be subjected to numerous phone calls, text messages, emails, PM's ad nausem throughout the weekend.

For me it's a matter of keeping things flexible and not creating catastrophic failure points. If the HD goes in the Opus will you really be able to replace it and if so is it user serviceable? If it can't be replaced easily will you just have flushed $3k down the toilet? I would think that a Mac Mini w/ either an external hard drive or upgraded internal HD + SB3 would make a wonderful, small form factor music server (and much more if you wanted). Heck, if you want a really sweet music server setup you could set it up and use a full sized display (omit the SB3) with the mini - I think that folks have already done this with great success. And the other great thing is that support is easily accessible if you have problems and repairs are simple and cheap. If I didn't already own two Squeezeboxes it'd probably be what I did.

Thanks for the kind words, I hope this thread hasn't been too blogish for folks. As far as the wiring goes I'm really happy with the way the amp turned out. I feel like I did about as good a job as can be expected of efficiently routing wires, keeping signal and heaters at right angles wherever possible and keeping L, R and G colored coded throughout the whole amp (other than the signal wiring from the pot to the input tube). The next 8 hours is going to take an eternity to pass... I figured f'it, it's my amp and all my cans are terminated with 4 pin XLRs so why should I have to use an adapter. They make great single ended jacks and once you remove the stupid locking tab and rear mount them they're slick as all hell looking.

You think it'd help K1000s get a bit more sparkle or sizzle in the top end?