n_maher

Well, Pete signed off on the wiring this morning so I'm all clear to fire it up tonight and see how it goes. The pisser is that I have a meeting after work that is expected to go till 8:30, meaning that I won't be home until at least 9. Otherwise, I guess it's safe to post a couple pictures of the wiring now and take the full brunt of people's criticism on my lack of skills. Power Supply Wiring (minor tweaks have been made to this) Amp Wiring Be gentle, this is my first PTP project other than the little starving hybrid amp.

A quick search located a couple of places that offer boot disks for the T40, available for download for ~$10. Probably worth looking into more but without the exact model # of the computer I can't do any more.

She's a good kid, hasn't had the easiest life and yeah, I tend to dote on her like every good older brother should. Needless to say she was compensated for the shipping plus a little extra.

RK50 Just when your wallet thought it was safe to come to CanJam...

Little sister - "Hey Nate, if you want my old Powerbook you can have it." Nate - "Sure!" Free 15" Powerbook FTW

Indra, If a music server is what you're after you might take a look at something like the Squeezebox coupled to a good outboard DAC. Yes, it means that you have to have a computer running somewhere in the house to host all of your music but for me that wasn't a big deal and the interface is very nice. Plus, HD storage for desktop computers is very affordable compared to all-in-one players like the Olive Opus. Speaking of which, I went their site and they appear to have revamped their line completely and not at all to my liking.

Heh, my free Powerbook G4 should ship around the end of this week.

Come on, man, the only team I belong to is Team No Frilly Bullshit. The only farkle I've put on an amp in the last year was a Nugget Audio badge and that was mostly to get a rise out of one Mr. Samuels since he's thought from day 1 that I was his competition.

I'm confused as to why the 2/3 mod is 81.25% of the full price? Me fail math, that's unpossible.

I know I'm biased but man, oh man this thing is friggen sexy... And just so I can post a picture of something new tonight here are the two umbilical cable. The filament cable is 4 hand braided strands of 14awg commercial copper wire (oh nos, the audio gods say) and the B+ umbilical is 3x 14awg commercial power cable rated for 600V. Both are terminated with Amphenol connectors, the B+ in such a way so that male pins are never exposed with live voltage (thanks to KG for that recommendation way back in a B52 thread).

Agreed, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Either way it's 8 to 10x more than I can think about.

Maybe one of the lawyers here can chime in but I don't think that a limit of liability statement would hold up in court against gross negligence. Glad to hear that you were able to rescue them Alex and I can't wait to see what Head-Fi does when the thread gets posted.

Hmmm, that 10k figure is different that what tj told me at the first National Meet when I was sitting across from him. Maybe he had mods done that pushed the price higher but I was told $8k. I can say that it sounded absolutely outstanding when I listened to it then, my frame of reference has changed since then but I'd still expect it to be nothing short of stellar. And fierce, I will be publishing the schematics for both the power supply and the amp for the menace some time in the next couple of weeks. If you're really interested and can't wait just give me a couple of days to make sure the amp works. I'd expect that this amp will compete with many mentioned in this thread.

Indeed it is good news. I had a high level of confidence in the PS wiring (and certainly the design) but still, flipping that switch for the first time and watching the volts slowly rise was pretty fracken cool and exceptionally nerve wracking all at the same time.

This is Nate, posting to you live from the Top Secret Menace testing facility, errr, my basement. The power supply has just been successfully fired for the first time without issue. Unloaded B+ is right on target with the 5AR4's, now rolling in 5U4G's to see if B+ drops as expected... So far it's all WOOTS! here in NH. And there won't be any testing of the amp tonight, I'm done with the wiring but want to send pictures to Pete for a quick sanity check before unleashing the hounds for the first time.

I'm not picky, any stax will do really.

For a pair of Lambdas I think I can contain that rumor for you.

It's bad, it's nationwide. At the start of last week gas was just barely over $3 here, it's now over $3.40. Personally I think we're about at critical mass when it comes to gas prices so the next 6 months should be, uh, interesting...

Quite possibly, yes, but it does limit you to USB only so if you don't want to feed it USB all the time you're SOL. If USB is your primary source it's the best choice I can think of.

aha, pretty crazy that there's only one man'f for a given tube. And the electrolytics appear to be a mix of Panasonic FC or FM series (hard to tell apart in pictures) and Nichicon UPW (or similar).

How long are you going to leave that JJ tube in there? Glad to hear that it finally arrived and more importantly fully intact.

I think you're on to something. I wasn't you man, if it was we'd be razzing you like there was no tomorrow.

Another option if you'd like something that can take inputs other than USB would be the Headroom Micro Portable. In my book it's still portable enough and might work better on a desktop where some of the smaller amps actually become a liability (at least for me they do).

When?

Slyvania 5U4GBs (quad), Cetron 5998s (matched pair), CBS 5692 brown base (x2) and a few other good quality used tubes to use for testing. The Menace is quickly turning me into a tube whore.