n_maher

I ain't sayin' nothin'! He appears to do truly top-flight work. I'd really be interested in seeing some of it live at some point and meeting him, seems like a cool guy. I've quoted my prices for another beta: single-ended, two chassis = $3k, balanced, dual PS, two chassis = $5k. It's not worth it to do it for less.

Good news arrived in my inbox this morning in the form of a "you didn't screw anything up" message. Woot! Final wiring to commence at 7pm EST.

I can only speak for me but I built it myself and then stupidly sold it. :| One point of clarification though, I'm not aware of anyone currently accepting orders to build beta22's. MisterX did for a while and I'd certainly ask him if he would again, thrice did for a while but I'm not sure that he's going to continue and I've seen at least one truly awful build by someone on head-fi who did a custom build for someone. So my advice on that front is choose your builder wisely (not necessarily directed at you Constrastique), it's a pretty straightforward build but there are a lot of things that can go wrong.

Yeah, me too. I'm pretty sure that I'm ok but when it comes to matter of high voltage I'm going to defer to the expert and see what he says.

Had to stop tonight for two reasons: 1. I was beat after working on it till 11:30. 2. I think that I screwed up part of the wiring, that if screwed up will mean that I don't have enough parts to finish the amp. \

Not Safe For Work

She linked to this poll over there.

No interest in what's going on here but Mark, feel free to say whatever you want. We're not much for moderation here.

I haven't heard enough to be able to compare but someday I'll own another beta22, preferably of the balanced variety. Commercial gear just isn't my thing.

Would it be too evil of me to just remove a couple options from the poll?

That's cold man, just cold.

That's all the hard mounted parts but there are definitely a few more (just resistors and caps) to go that will be wired into the circuit and either attach to the tube sockets, terminal strips or otherwise. I ended up adding a second terminal strip last night to use as a grounding point. I drew up a wiring diagram for the whole amp and I just wasn't happy with how things were being routed and by the number of connections that I was having to tie to a single point. This is mostly because as a starting point the ground of the amp is going to be floated and not tied to the chassis while the amp chassis will be tied to AC ground via the umbilical cord. We'll see what I get for hum, hey at this point I'd be happy with hum, and then figure out if I need to work on an alternate grounding scheme. I'm pretty sure that there was no way this was ever going to be a single chassis amp. Here's to hoping I can get the wiring finished up tonight and maybe test it tomorrow night. A box of tubes just arrived so I've got my test tubes ready to go. Nate

Wiring will commence withing the hour, but first a couple of pictures since fabrication is now complete baring the need for another terminal strip. I haven't quite made up my mind about that just yet. I couldn't resist mocking it up with tubes Upskirt

I hope that it isn't that ghetto looking to you guys.

Very nice work, man. Those look seriously sweet.

Yeah, I have a press and I've got a vice so really it shouldn't be all that bad. Just be a bummer if I torch a $30 knob from THL that I don't even want to use for this project but it's the only one that I have on hand that will really work w/ the rest of the project (scale wise).

In a word, no.

Day/Night 9: no pictures tonight, mostly because I had to stop mid-drilling for fear of waking my wife and unleashing the wrath. But today I managed to get both power umbilical cords built and just about all the rest of the chassis fabrication done. All that's left for tomorrow night is to finish drilling the power inputs (less than a half hour) and then it'll be time to start installing all the big parts so that wiring can begin. With a little luck I'll get that started tomorrow night. With a lot of luck I'll have all of the wiring finished up Tuesday night and might get to fire this sucker up Wednesday... Oh, and wish me luck as tomorrow night I get to try and drill out a knob to fit the shaft extension that I have. The extension that I have is 1/4" and the knob is 6mm (.2362") and there's no way that I have time to try and find another extension kit and also hope that it fits the mounting holes that I've already drilled.

Ok, back on topic. Nights 7 and 8: amp fab continues. Cut thumb aside I really did make some half-way decent progress tonight. First things first I needed to enlarge the holes that I'd drilled for the Johnson tube sockets. I guess that these are supposed to be mounted from the underside but that would make using the various output tubes that I have in mind a giant hassle. Basically it'd mean finding a way to mount them in the same location that would require 1-3/4" access hole for the tube base. Uh, that's not going to work at all. But with the help of a few folks here and my local hardware store I found all the things that I'd need to mount them on the top of the chassis which I think looks 10x better anyway. Also, after a few conversations with Pete we decided that my plan of running parallel 50W resistors to both help with temperatures and also run the resistors conservatively was a good plan. So a little more work with Autocad and I'd found a way to mount them such that my existing layout wouldn't require modification. That's a damn good thing since modifications at this point would involve overnight shipping and tossing what I have in the trash can. So after enlarging the tube socket holes I got down to the business of laying out the resistors in their predetermined locations and also laying out the mounthing holes for the two caps at the rear of the chassis (local B+ caps). Then it was just a matter of drilling 20 or so holes and the bulk of the top panel fabrication is now complete. I installed the resistors and the sockets to make sure that everything was fitting as intended and decided to call it a night. Tomorrow is front and rear panel time, with all round holes that should go pretty quickly. I suppose this wouldn't be complete without a few pictures. Custom Holes (not sexy, but functional) Socket and Resistor Mock Up Holes Drilled Top Layout Preview I Hope These Resistors Are Big Enough That's it for tonight, but wait, a preview of things to come...

They make silver vinyl?

Damnit, I meant to Season's Pass that and forgot.

Update: hour 783.216 - rich colorful sound with good tone and separation. Like all good burn-in reviews I haven't actually spent any time listening to the amp yet. Ok, a successful lunch time trip to the store yielded both rubber o-rings to use as spacers and RTV silicone to use as well. No black available so I had to settle for red. Devil colored RTV works for me. Also managed to put in a call to my tube pimp and order the last of the tubes that I want to have available for the trip to FLA. It's a damn good thing that I have in no way attempted to track what I've spent on this project. I'm guessing that the power supply has the better part of $500 or so into it not counting tubes. And the amp, while less expensive in terms of parts will be a lot more in terms of tubes. The race to CanJam continues...

Reason #2 not to use them.

A little bling for this amp but something worth considering if I can't get the others to work.

I care and actually have some nice, normal octal sockets I just didn't think it was going to be as much of an issue using the Johnson sockets. Now that I've got 1-1/2" holes in the chassis my options moving forward are somewhat limited unless I start fabing mounting plates to hide the over sized holes and I think that the rtv is a better solution.