Do It Yourself

I thought it would be fun to document the insane amount of work it will take to turn the Single Power ES-2 into something useful. Now Kevin had done quite a bit of work for me such as fitted new teflon tube sockets and teflon Stax sockets but that still leaves a lot of shit to do. Here is what it looked like when I got it: The wooden front for the amp section was cracked so Kevin threw it out. The weight of just the empty chassis was pushing 24kg so my first decision was to ditch the PSU and do it internally. First up do the back panel: Here is the reason why I don't add RCA's to my amps... Now for the front panel. Mikhail had plenty of …

just finished one of these at school. Soldering, Learn how to Solder Kit worked after the first try. no solder bridges. no bad contacts. no cold solders. gentleman who runs the e.e. lab guided me and got me started and said that i could take on a project that has a printed circuit board. as with all else, he said i will learn good practices as i make mistakes. i have started looking into a speaker rig. the drivers are fostex 206e (96db efficiency) so i figured a couple of watts will suffice. the listening volumes will be fairly low. for the 206e drivers, this amp seems to be thrown around on diyaudio a lot for reasons of synergy or what have you. Zen Triode…

http://nervenet.info/HT_delay/ I bought 2 of these to delay the HV startup of the megatron, I'll let you guys know how they turn out. Seems like a pretty nice drop-in

hello people, i wanna build myself a decent headphone amp. so i thought maybe of building a supra. it uses 3 6sn7 or 6 (if you wanna do it balanced) did anyone do this before ? what are the costs ? does anyone has the schematics ? does anyone know a better amp for that price ? i know it is otl, and some are for otl, some are for trannies. i just don't know what i'm up to. i would use it on a akg 701 which i still have to buy. i need help guys, thanx a lot

Hello, this is my first post here. I have Stax SR-303/SRM-313 combo. It works well with my vinyl player but with cd it is cold and boring. Cd (Audio aero prima) is fine with my speakersystem, so I?m not going to change it. I got an idea of DIY tube amp with SR-303. Having read many threads here and the other, now malfunctioning forum, I have found this Gilmores schema: http://headwize.com/projects/gilmore_prj.htm Is this a good schema? What else would you recommend? I won?t make this myself, have to make it by an experienced amp maker, so it can be a relatively complicated amp like that of Gilmores.

Oh, the number of times I have mentioned how much I like Steve Blinn or Adona rack designs! Extruded aluminum exudes strength and elegance, gotta love those T-slots... but, the price, yikes! Well, in my never-ending quest to one day build myself something along those lines, I came across this little gem of a site: http://www.framexpert.com/ What's so special about it? A FREE download program that lets you build whatever you want using the t-slots. I've been playing with the erector set for about an hour now and it is pretty easy to use, especially given the fact that I have no experience with 3-D software whatsoever. It even provides a cost estimate of your build a…

Hi, Has anybody got a great idea for a really good power cable that's under about $50 in parts cost, including connectors? The new Woo needs a power cord. At the moment, it's attached to the wall with a spare 14/3 Belden. My past thoughts on power cords have been pretty basic - for-real adequately sized conductors and shield the living bejeezus out of it. I've had good luck with some nice star-quad plenum wire with the safety ground on the outside, a la the recipe on TakeFive Audio. I pulled one of those cords out of my living room system and tried it on the Woo. It was lovely. But nowadays everybody's into braiding everything. I've made some very nice soundin…

Anyone willing to make a Xhadow XLR chassis mount for me ? I am thinking of an aluminium plate (the depth of a gender modules' thread), A threaded tunnel in its? centre to accept the gender module and two or more bolt/screw holes near the edge to allow attachment to a chassis. a disassembled XLR connector is shown http://www.takefiveaudio.com/mall/images/zoom/601_2.jpg the shiny piece with the white core and gold screws in the back of it is a gender module. If anyone spots a design flaw please point it out. I?ve e-mailed Chris Sommovigo at Xhadow and the edited highlights of his reply were : I?d like to get 4 of these mounts so I can have Xhadow XLR c…

So, what happens when I have a new (to me) lathe, some left over mahogany and nothing better to do? Yup, those are my HF-1 on the bannana stand, and my maple woodied 325s, which are for sale. But what are those other ones? I call them the HF-1000 I was making some standard woody cups and figured I'd have a run at something resembling the GS-1000 (which I've never seen in person). The mahogany I had was way too dry and none of the standard cups came out well (actually only one survived!), but the goofy mushroom cups came out well enough. So after I finished turning them, Nate gave me a hand drilling them out and we decided to see how they'd look on his …

I'm looking for those connectors that sony and AT use with the 3.5mm plug with a screw on 1/4" adapter. Does anyone know if they're available?

Hi Everyone, First of all, I'd like to thank you guys for all of the information you have posted on this site. Without all of this, I would probably be screwed, and not able to find enough information on how to make a Stax amp. I have been wanting a sizable upgrade from my pair of HD 595s and after getting the Fidelio X2s which I wasn't too impressed with, have decided to go all the way and get the STAX SR-407 . I decided that I would also like to take this as a learning exercise and build my own amp. I've built a Millet SS Hybrid before, and know my way around electronics a bit, although probably not at these voltages. I have been doing some research over this past …

Recently I purchased a B22 from Spritzer. The unit was built by Nate, so it's a nice Nugget Audio 3 boards + 1 Sigma 22, single ended, 8x gain unit, made to work on 230VAC. Apart from exquisite care to avoid hum and lower the noise floor, it features a dual input to select from two sources from a rear switch. Spritzer had changed this feature to a loop, so the switch was disabled and while one of the inputs is used, the other one works as an output. I point this because that switch resulted a handy addition. The amp works very well and sounds great with all of my cans, but as time living with it passed, I started to feel annoyed for the fact that being my so…

I decided to recase my original dynahi. I wired the ac inlet, then hooked up the transformer primaries (Avel Lindberg transformer) gray and bown wires went to hot, blue and violet went to neutral. I got correct voltage on the primaries and secondaries when I threw the power switch. I mounted the original psu in the case. This is the board http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/dynahipsbig.bmp I connected one pair of secondary wires to AC1 and the other pair to AC2. The order went 1 to orange, 2 to yellow, 3 to black, 4 to red. I threw the switch and the fuse blew. Now the transformer primaries and secondaries are shorted when checked with a meter out of the cir…

I thought it might be kind of helpful to have a thread of your least favorite parts so everyone else can avoid them. For me, right now it's the Switchcraft TA3F mini 3-pin XLR connector for AKG headphones. Piece of crap is made of metal and bad plastic and is breaking/falling apart on me. But there's no alternative available

Got a couple pictures last night at last. It's been running for a few weeks now, I kept tinkering with it, but it's pretty much done for now. Built mostly from parts on hand, plus an old scsi drive chassis. I did buy a few resistors once I had settled on working values, if only to replace a couple series and parallel conglomerations. Obligatory off and on shots... Started with this lumber and chassis... [ATTACH=CONFIG]3086[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]3087[/ATTACH] There is another thread (dead bug psu) that shows some other pics along the way. The amp is derivation of the mapletree design; it has higher operating voltage, similar to his super, though t…

Does anybody know where to get knobs for the bottom 2 POTS with the dual concentric turning shafts? ALPS Blue Velvet, Bourns Potentiometer and more......

So as to stop spamming the stax thread, and get everything in one place. I recently got a ripping great deal on an SRA-3S in unknown condition. And since all of these are at least 50 years old, there is much to go through. There are some existing resources to link, and I will come back and add more as i scrape 'em together: It's a shame there are no component designations on the boards or schematic, so we'll go ahead and muddle through without them. Maybe I'll annotate some images. The area in the red box is the phono preamp. It's not much of a preamp. I hear you can pull the board and leave it out. An enterprising nerd could b…

I just got a PCB that has a void in the solder mask on top of the board. It is not a scratch, the mask is kinda piled up around the void. It looks like a contaminant may have kept the mask off that area. There are some epoxies online to fix this. I was wondering if you guys know of something locally obtainable to fix this?

So how difficult would it be to design an upgraded linear power supply for this unit? Something that might fit in a smallish Hammond case maybe.

What is it that generates a pop/crackle sound when a stepped attenuator traverses steps ? this is happening with my left channel goldpoint stereo volume attenuator, the matching right attennuator in the same amp is unafflicted by this odd effect. One differance I can see between the two attenuators is that the unaffected one has wires linking to chassis ground (xlr pin1) other wise they seem to be wired the same. left -pop/crackle right - no pop/crackle n.b. the loudness of the pop/crackle generated when traversing steps increases as the attenuator knob is turned further clockwise. While on a step both attenuators perform the same. The actual volum…

Thought it might make sense to make a new thread on this so as not to pollute the T2 thread. So this would be limited to the chassis, any potential board run, and any other potential group buys for traffos or transistors (if numbers warrant). I am hoping to move forward by the end of the week. Please keep in mind, if you are in and make your deposit, you are committed and will not back out unless you find someone to take your spot (so if you are not well established, then paypal gift only). Please express interest here or by PM. I have also included a link to the results of the first group buy:

Been getting these lately: Dear Customer, Thank you for ordering from Mouser Electronics. Unfortunately, we are unable to obtain an authorization for your purchase from your credit card company. The most common reasons for unauthorized purchases are an invalid credit card number, an expired credit card date, or purchase has been declined as it exceeds the credit limit. Please contact us 852-37564755 to verify your credit card information or to provide an alternative payment method (such as another credit card or to let me know if you’d like to wire the funds in advance) so that we may continue processing your order. You may contact us by replying to th…

I have been thinking about parting with my Melos SHA-1 for a while. It was [url=http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/617/]Corey Greenberg

The saga of messing with my 2nd Carbon build continues. Since the circuit is very close to the Grounded Grid, I'd like to give it a try. Being hesitant to spend big bucks on a nice quad EL34, I have been on the lookouts for a cheaper substitute. The curve of a pentode looks a lot like that of a SiC FET. I need a pentode with the following properties: The plate curve should have low kinks or no kinks at the low Va range. The lower the 'knee' the better. Low Ig2. Ig2 should be much smaller than Ia (20mA), ideally 1mA or less under the operational Va range such that Ig2 doesn't interfere with cathode drive/ cathode degeneration. The amount of negati…

Does anyone know where I can get instructions for adjusting the bias on an SRM-T1? I would like to replace the tubes and it seemed logical to find out. Then again, maybe not. Who cares? Seriously though, any help would be appreciated.