n_maher

Let me clarify, what other amps have you built? What is your experience with DIY electronics in general? Comments like this will get you roasted around here. You haven't heard either and yet you're willing to draw conclusions about relative performance. I don't know what else to say other than the Aikido is a very flexible platform and built properly should be able to compete with just about any capacitor output coupled amp. How can I say that without ever having heard one? Because the design itself is technically sound and the man behind it isn't exactly known for putting out crap.

Please pardon the blunt question but what else have you built before this? A high-voltage tube amp isn't a great starting point for DIY and I don't recognize your user name from other sites so I have no idea whether this is your first or 100th project. [edit]And the example Grawk just pointed to is a very good one, one that I'll hopefully be building some time soon...

You do realize that this house in the picture is around ~6000SF (ignoring the basement) and probably cost ~4mil, right? As for beemers in the driveway, they've more than got that covered. IIRC these folks were old Texas oil money. Back on topic - I liked the Equinox Senn cable that I got to sample a year or so ago but honestly, we had three 650s hooked up all with different cables and in back to back to back testing the differences were pretty small. Sure, there were differences but we certainly weren't hearing night and day. Also, there's that huge wait time issue, which would rule it out for me.

Mostly, I make them stand up. I'm a structural engineer and do residential and commercial buildings most days of the week. When I do my job well you hardly know I was involved at all. I'll dredge up a few pics and post them some time in the "projects" thread in the DIY forum to not completely derail this thread. And Vicki, as long as you're happy with it that's all that matters. Since you seemed interested in the whole "buildings" thing as well here's a picture of a little house that I worked on a couple years ago. And yes, those aholes have sand for a front yard and an unimpeded path to the Atlantic. Worse still, this is the family's fourth house and they only use it a couple times a year.

I'm with you there Reks, I was at UNH yesterday looking at a building that I designed and it occurred to me that this year's freshman class will essentially be the last class born of the 80s. Son of a...

Vicki, you want to post pictures of the damage and see if we can't find some way to spruce it up further? Even if you keep it it'd be nice if it didn't remind you of the BS every time you look at it. You've got all sorts of friends in low places now.

This thing probably weighs what, 20x the tomahawk. By Raw's law of burn-in that means that at 4000hrs it will really start to open up and at 8000hrs it'll be the bestest evar!!!1!!

Sell the Heed, save your $$$. Dangit, did I just do a "voice of reason" thing again, my bad, my bad. And you know that John will let you borrow his, and isn't Gene getting a pair too?

Check your PM's, you might not have that problem for long...

I just fail to understand how some of these cable companies justify their costs... So I guess I'll send what others have said, try some of the lesser expensive cables (Blue Jeans, Anti, etc) and see how your dad likes them. Me, I've tried some of the MIT Terminator line but found that both the anti-cables and DIY stuff sounded considerably better at a fraction of the cost.

I love living in the boonies where there isn't a single person within range of my wireless network.

Probably not, since if you weren't pirating the material you'd want the best version available, right? It would seem the logical thing to do would be to chose to go back to all DVD and see if you can occasionally spec the Blu-Ray version if that's what you want.

Uh, yeah, I'd have to agree that he probably hasn't spent any significant time comparing the Melos to anything else.

You know it's funny, I had a chance to try a Melos in my rig at the last Boston Meet and I came away pretty nonplussed. I mean for $300 to $400 it's probably a fine amp but I guess I just didn't get any of the magic that some folks do and could never see spending $1000 on a completely modded one. Quite frankly, I liked my uber-Millett considerably more with Grados, car radio tubes and all.

You had me at Buffy, downloading Season 1 now. Gotta find something since those cocksuckers canceled Deadwood.

Isn't that what the XR-10B does? It only has single ended inputs.

and probably as hot as hell too.

That's what I've always been told as well. Can't say I've ever really looked into it though.

Sort of, but the Wheatfield uses a tube rectified power supply, which I don't think any Extreme does and the Extreme runs parallel output tubes (as you know) so it drives low-ohm loads better but requires matched tubes. One more thing, the Wheatfield has enough current capacity to run some serious output tubes like the 6528A, I'm not sure the Extreme can handle that.

YGPM

Aha, I suppose that'll get the job done in the interim. You know, love of tubes aside you might give some serious thought about Stephen's beta22 group buy. For relatively short money you could have a nice amp for both sets of cans.

Deepak, Are you seriously without an amp right now? I think you've answered this before but heck if I can remember what you've got on the way right now.

Honestly, if a one-off custom were what I was looking for and money wasn't thought to be a big object I'd see if I could get in touch with Blackie Pagano. The Noise Duality amp that he built for tjkurita is beyond impressive both visually and sonically.

I'm pretty sure that they don't, but it's probably discussed with the idea that open discussion of such things will probably only spread dissension and that it'd be a quick ticket for the removal of mod privileges.

Honestly Jacob, given the amount of shit that they have to sift through and how few mods there are that are active at all I'm not all that surprised. Head-Fi could use 4x the number of mods especially considering that there's a good number that don't log on hardly at all any more.