Little Dot MkVI balanced tube amp?

[Hopstretch]

I know they don't get many (any?) mentions over here and this will probably mark me as irretrievably jejeune -- but, for the money, I've been pretty happy with the Little Dot MkIVse I picked up used on HF.

Anyway, their new balanced tube amp is apparently now available at a fairly tempting $724 shipped to the U.S. and I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the basic design? Haven't been able to locate any specs, though they explicitly say it was designed to be able to drive K1000s. Any idea what the driver tubes might be?





Pity about the gold tube sockets, but what are you gonna do?

[n_maher]

I swear there was already a thread about this...

[Hopstretch]

If so, I apologize but I couldn't find it. Or any other mention of Little Dot, hence my groveling intro.

Edit: Aaaand ... here it is of course.

Off to do some reading. Please feel free to delete this.

[n_maher]

No worries, I can't find it either but I know there was some information posted at some point.

I have several questions/concerns about the design of that thing and the chassis that they have it shoe horned into. At first blush it's pretty similar to the Menace but with double the output tubes which means that they've got a lot of heat to deal with in a really small space. As it is just the heaters for the output tubes are dissipating 60W. And if they were trying to get the specs similar to Pete's HA-2 there's a ton of heat generated by the cathode resistors and I don't see anything near big enough to deal with that. Hell, on the Menace I had to use 50W power resistors and external heatsinks to keep things in line.

[n_maher]

Wait, found it.

Global economics 101...Little Dot mk VI

[Hopstretch]

Thanks Nate. If I do take a chance on one, I'll be happy to send it up your way so you can have a listen and a poke around inside, should you care to.

[Hopstretch]

Looks like you were right about the heat issue. The first ones have started to arrive and, according to the HF thread, they now have (loud and crappy) cooling fans shoehorned into the case.

[n_maher]

You have got to be kidding me. epic

[JBLoudG20]

Are those LED fans? AWESOME RICER AUDIOPHILES

The top pic shows Delta's : loud as FUCK.

[en480c4]

[EdipisReks]

Originally Posted by JBLoudG20

Are those LED fans? AWESOME RICER AUDIOPHILES

The top pic shows Delta's : loud as FUCK.

"man, this amp really replicates 'fsssshhhhh' transients, like, super realistically!"

[blessingx]

Amp fan noise could be a good solution for computer fan noise.

[spritzer]

Guess it was far too much work to redesign the PCB with a lot of ventilation slots and a new chassis design...

[EdipisReks]

Originally Posted by spritzer

Guess it was far too much work to redesign the PCB with a lot of ventilation slots and a new chassis design...

if they did that, it would turn into a Big Dot, and all the money they have spent on Little Dot branding would be wasted.

[Fungi]

They're not even 120mm fans

[Smeggy]

Hey, that's a pretty good idea. I wonder if I could put fans in my headphone cups to keep my ears cool. shouldn't interfere with the sound too much. Hmmm, I see a patent with my name on it... *strokes chin*

[Voltron]

I'm going to be laughing about those fans for fucking ever. Classic.

[Voltron]

Originally Posted by Hopstretch

I know they don't get many (any?) mentions over here and this will probably mark me as irretrievably jejeune -- but, for the money, I've been pretty happy with the Little Dot MkIVse I picked up used on HF.

New. Custom. Title.

[Hopstretch]

Originally Posted by Voltron

New. Custom. Title.

I do feel bad for them. Their US agent is as nice a guy as you could hope to meet and they were really, really good about a resistor issue with the MkIVse that affected me and a few other owners on HF. No fuss, took it straight back and sent me a new one -- and I was the third owner of that particular unit and said so.

This looks like last-minute panic after a few early-production models went up in smoke. The designer was saying on their forum quite recently that it would be passive-cooled only.

[Smeggy]

I wonder if there's room inside for small Halon fire extinguisher