Headphone options for 300B tube amp

[jtsin67]

Hi,

While i am spending pennies on my senn setup, i am considering looking at a set of cans that can leverage a nice 300B p/p amp i use on my speaker system. I think there are numerous options but wonder if anyone can offer first hand experience with cans and 300B amps?

Thanks.

[JBLoudG20]

Skull candy ink'd

[Voltron]

The skull candies would be nice, but I have K1000s that sound fantastic with my 300B amp and others like foo_me have similar setups and love them. I have also heard K340s reterminated with speaker connectors as an option (using a 4-pin xlr as main connector and optional tails of 1/4 and banana plus or spades for speakers). Those sounded very good. CD3000s various Audio Technicas sound great out of the Woo Audio 5 with 300Bs. Anybody with a WA5 should be able to tell you what they like with it.

[recstar24]

The k340's I think could be a killer option. When I was auditioning morphsci's pair the amount of power to drive them to moth was pretty much identical to what it took to drive my hornshoppe horns (96 db or so) at about 2.5 meters listening distance. I was surprised at how power hungry they are but they sound fantastic on a nice tube amp (45 and 2a3 tubes in my setup).

[jtsin67]

I was not aware the 340's could be wired to the amp. I should have been clearer with the title and explanation of needing something to wire direct to the speaker terminals but thanks for the pointers - starting to dive a little deeper into the AKG options as i have had a pair so long ago i cant remember but loved the sound (too bad the head band broke) and I left them to rot in a corner..

[penger]

If I'm not mistaken, you can take something like the adapter in the FS forums to connect to the speaker terminals.

[jtsin67]

Hmmm- reckon i still need the cans so if i can buy a set that are ready to wire in all the better. I think with that connector in the FS id' need to wire up an attenuator to use just any old cans, right?

[MaloS]

Ain't that easy...keep in mind the speaker amp being designed for 4-8 ohms or so while headphones being likely higher...plus not to mention power and such involved.

K1000/K340 work, you can use transformer with Stax, maybe few other options...but you are not going to do alot of running here (luckily most of your options are good).

[jtsin67]

Thanks for that. I found some good info on building a unit to match the impedance of cans to speaker amp terminals. 1000's are out of reach, 340's may be a goer.

[Smeggy]

Another option is orthodynamics. They like speaker amps just fine.

[jtsin67]

I am going to try my senn's wired up today - cautiously! So may be in the market for new gear shortly!

[jtsin67]

So it works quite nicely - simply snipped off the 1/8" plug from the stock cable and wired a couple of tails. Off my 16 Ohm taps there is a really small amount of play as i guess you would expect, but the sound is very nice indeed. I will be waiting until i have the MM to test how the sound differs, but it is surprisingly good right off the bat.