Do It Yourself

With all those new balanced amplifiers around I can't really resist and I want at least to have a taste of that heaven with a balanced 650, so, what is the most beautiful sounding but also simple DIY balanced amplifier in your opinion?

This topic has needed its own thread for quite some time (years), so starting one. I may see if I can get a mode to move some of the posts here (Carbon thread, not sure where else they are littered). 11 hours ago, Pars said: GRHV question: I'm building a pair of the singles intended for 400V output. On the BOM I have, there are 2 680uf caps for each board; 1 is a 550V caP, the other a 450V cap. I presume the 550V would go right after the rectifiers in the schematic, and the 450V on the output. The BOM that was posted by jamesmking uses 4 x 470uf 550V Kemets. Is there much difference between the 680uf and 470uf in terms of sound or anything? BTW,…

I'm happy to report that the goldenreference low voltage dual power supply works as designed, and tests less than 1 microvolt of noise. Going to have to take it to work and put it in a screen room to really measure the noise. http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/goldenreferencedual.jpg however there is one silkscreen error seen by the extra + near the 47uf cap on the right side. I will update the files shortly. All 4 of the 47uf caps need to have their plus sides pointing to the left. very happy with this

The mains cable (crappy 2-wire zip cord) on my SRD-Pro is a bit old and warn, and seems way too long. I would like to replace it with something that's of better quality. Of all the better (google results) power cable I've seen, it's all three wire, some shielded and some not. One article on Belden's three-wire shielded (#83803) mention constructing so that at the plug end, the shield wrap and the the ground wire are connected to the wall plug. At the component end, leave the shield floating; use the shield to capture interference traveling through the cable (in or out) and to ground them to earth so they do not cause any unwanted noise. My question is, if I choose a…

Thinking about recalbing my K701s... Any suggestions for a good 4-condutor cable? \ I will be running it balanced. How does Mogami 2534 rate? Thanks Pete

I need a caliper for my guitar experimentation. Is there a better value out there than this one? I see this one on Amazon -- any good?

I'm probably going to get in on the H2 + TR2 (xlr version) group buy over at the other place, so I figured now would be the time to start researching a speaker amp build. My F2 clone is almost done, but I was wondering what other options were out there.

I have a pair of "Cheap" helping hands with magnifier. These things you have to have but are never quite right. I also have a Panavise that I use them in conjunction with. They end up breaking and the hinges and clamps for the clips are dodgy at best. Are there any "Good" or "excellent" ones out there? I have to have the magnifier. I can't pay $300 for a set, but I would be willing to invest more than the $5.95 you pay now to get junk.

In my current situation I don't really have a designated area for electronics work. While trying to find a wife-accepted permanent location I've had to make due with a few impromptu work areas, all of which have really inadequate lighting. Funds are tight, but I absolutely can't afford to ruin another component attempting to forge ahead despite poor lighting conditions. I'm looking for something <$40 shipped (or bought locally) that can work well as a light for electronics work. Anyone have any suggestions on what to go for?

Interesting thread that has popped up from some recent controversy in Stereophile surround the Halco amps. A few heavy-weights are in on this discussion, so it should be interesting! http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1404200

I'm venturing into cable making and I've found sources for everything I need, except good quality copper wire. What should I look for? Thanks in advance! .

I'm building a couple of cables for a friend and he'd like them to be made of solid silver. My first thought was to buy some of Homegrown Audio's prebraided silver wire. It's not the cheapest but it is the easiest route to good looking silver cables in my opinion. And for what's it worth I've done the google thing and seen some stuff like VH Audio offers which is actually more than HGA. The first couple of pages of links that I found yielded nothing useful so here at am, at the mercy of your help. My only other experience buying bulk silver wire (from a GB on head-fi) wasn't particularly good so I'm wondering if any one wants to point me in the direction of a good suppli…

I have been using https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_iJFfZStuVhSE5nOHBVdTByR1k to access the stax gerber files for sometime but when i tried to today the folder shows up for literally a second in my web browser and then automatically redirects to the google drive trash folder and the web page freezes up with 100% cpu usage for the thread. I can access the schematics and spec sheets google drive folder without issue. I get the same behaviour with both google chrome and firefox. i don't know who to pm directly about the google drive issue so im making this general post in the hopes someone could investigate fix the issue. regards James

I'd love to hear your impressions it's not every day that a different crossfeed circuit comes about but, when it does, it's worth trying. Unfortunately I don't have any 18K resistors to hand (everything else but ) have ordered some and they will be here Tuesday...... in the meantime if any of you finger on the iron fast guns feel like trying it out and giving feedback it would be appreciated. Feedback in this thread here please, my joint couldn't handle the bandwith, Just thought I'd put this by you guys and trust you'll appreciate it. Pinkie.

LOW cost way to enhance/upgrade your Grado's...never understood why plastic is used on the stock ones. http://www.ebay.com/itm/322220921728?ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649 I also wish Grado's earpads and headband were more comfy. Oh well, I DO love the Grado house sound!!

It occurred to me a while back that my rig has gotten to a point that in terms of headphone amps it'll be pretty damn hard to beat what I have and that continuing to build more headphone amps is probably pretty silly. Where does that leave me? cue JBLoudG20 and Reks Speakers! Now I was talking with Pete the other day about basic speaker amp projects, specifically the design set forward in the boozhound labs howto pages. I had been looking at that project for a long time and had gathered about half the parts that I needed to complete the build but I was thinking of making some changes (different rectifier and input tubes) and solicited Pete's advice to make sure I did…

Nobel Prize on physics caught my attention this year. I've been reading about graphene and its peculiar proprieties. According to Yu

I'm trying to fix my grandma's Westinghouse electric griddle from the 50s. The resistor (at least I think that's what it is) has failed. Unfortunately, whatever insulating material was used to encase it has melted, so there is no way to make out any part value labeling. Is there some general "close enough" value part I can replace it with or is an exact replacement the only way? I know this isn't audio related, but I thought I would try asking here before seeking out a vintage appliance repair forum (which I'm sure exists somewhere).

Hello All... Since there were a bunch of requests for more GRLV boards I'll do another round. I've also added the boards listed below that are in demand. Also, as a side note if you're looking for boards from my last GB I have one set of Dynahi boards, four or five Dynalo Mini, and a few volume pot boards left. Send me a message if you need any of those. Sign up Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z1L3MQuuY4ZTUyPQb1qBmVJp8MtC7qEzBUui3z5dFrQ/edit?usp=sharing Balanced\Unbalanced board (both smt and through hole) Through Hole http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/boards/diffinput3.zip SMT http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/boar…

kgsshv-carbon with the sic-fets turned into 6ca7 was going to be next year

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…

I'm modding an Adcom CD player for a member here, installing a pair of Colin's I/V boards (player is balanced), and am debating on how and where to connect ground on these to the main board and power. These boards have on-board shunt regulators, so I am tapping power from the main filter caps right after the rectifiers for the 2 +/-15V power supplies for the analog section on the main board. AFAIK, it is usually not a good idea to connect more than 1 ground per board. The options I see are: Ground the boards through the power connector Ground the input of the boards Ground the output of the boards Currently, I am leaning towards #1, thinking that noise from the shunt r…

So, gathering interest for collaboration on KG's Dynafet. The way this would work is quite simple. There would be a group buy on parts as well as the boards. The parts would be supplied by myself and we'd work a deal out for people contributing in the matching efforts and various aspects of specing and acquiring parts. The boards would be the Hitachi version with external heat sinks, using KG's latest board files. Front end would be constructed from devices matched from a pool of 500 2SJ74BL and 500 2SK170BL matched to 20uA accuracy. All devices were pulled from original Toshiba packaging. Actually matched to 10uA with +/- 20uA measurement uncertainty added on t…

Another round of Carbon etc. state your interest here When ever there are enough boards for ordering participants will be asked to pay estimated price. Shipping will be added whenever the cost is known. Boards from PCBNet. Distribution via @mwl168 in US/Canada, and from Denmark, Europe for the remainder. /S

Now, Kerry is currently about to test the latest revision of the Kevin Gilmore Digital Attenuator, and since a few people have asked for a Group Buy we hereby probe the interest. Kerry is mostly inclined for the 50k version. Please put your request into the referenced Google spreadsheet. The information in the sheet in rgrds to price is from the former group buy and only to give an idea of where we might end with this group buy. As last time we will investigate cost of fully assembled boards as well as bare boards (with stencil) if people wants to DIY. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/131vk972PEIm-J4r5IbZT7IP7CAqoMfP4j0RfE0J0xeM/edit?usp=sharing Let me kno…