Do It Yourself

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…

Anyone have a LM337T they could pop into an envelope and send to me? Hate to place and order for a $.50 part with $10 shipping.

I am probably starting to much thread here but anyway, here is another one. I heard about the Bamaslama amp, and now I want to build one. schematic: PSU amp Is the relay needed because of the power supply design ? Does it make a "plop" when you power the amp ? Can I use cheap dual op-amp or something special is needed there ? Then what kind of relay do I need ? Are all resistors 1/4W ? Do i need matched pair for the second stage tube ? What will be the DC offset like ? What is the filament wiring like ? What will be the approximate price to build it ? I will use cheap coupling caps in the first time. Lots of question as always,

I'm in the process of putting together an Elenco XP-720K bench power supply kit. The kit has 3 ICs and 1 transistor in T0-220 package format. The instructions have the builder bending the legs 90 degrees and then mounting the devices on the heat sink. This seems normal enough. However, to hook wires up to the devices, the instructions instruct the builder to tin the wire and solder it to the correct leg. The instructions are here: Elenco XP-720K manual To me, this approach seems likely to result in a fragile device. Is this a normal thing to do? I assume that there are connectors I could use. Would it be better to use connectors. Or can you suggest yet anot…

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…

folks, if i wanna build a single ended amp (amp for headphones, but not electrostatic amp), which model(s) is the best choice?

I'v decided to build a balaced M3 and I would like to see how others may have implmemented swithchable gain and different component choices. Thanks

so this has been kicking around for a while, decided to publish. take my ubaltobal converter, cut it in half, and then take the top piece, replace the input transistor with a tube... high impedance input... DC coupled, no negative feedback, less than .01% thd, 10db gain... just add a high power bipolar output buffer, and cheap tube hybrid with lots of plankton. work in progress http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/tubehybrid.pdf 100 volt power supply real simple with TI TL783 high voltage regulator +/-30 supplies with lm317/lm337 with boosters cheap!

Is it too ambitious of a beginner project to try and do like, a BantamDAC and Mini^3 or Pimeta in a single enclosure? Note that my experience with casework and surface mount soldering is zero, not even having made either standalone. I think the casework is going to be the hardest part of this, based on what I've read from past DIY stuff, and I guess the question boils down to "is the casework for two-in-one a bad idea to do before doing a single?" if I'm not mistaken.

Looking to buy one of these: Hakko 936-12 ESD or Weller WES51 Any comments on pros/cons for each model? Has anyone got experience with both? Thanks Pete

I'm looking to build something along the lines of the Stax SRD-7/ Woo Wee but with better iron in a lower turn ratio (maybe 1:10/1:15/1:20). Does anyone have recomendations for iron? Spritzer, do you offer your bias boards still? I'll keep my eye out for s SRD-7 with pro connection but in the mean time this could be a fun project. Thanks!

What's the polarity of the Turbulent Labs driver? Is the green dot + or - ?

Hello All... After realizing I missed out on the latest group buy I thought about having a run of boards made. I believe 3oz copper is recommended for the GRLV and in order to get the boards to an affordable price with that weight it looks like 20+ would do it. While I'm at it, is there any interest in ALPS quad pcbs as well?

Hey guys, I ran the schematic of my moth to dsavistk and he offered some recommendations for a couple of places to upgrade the caps. Looking for 33uF 450V high quality cap, film for sure. They are cathode bypass caps. Right now there is a solen polypropylene in there, the only thing I could find which may be an improvement is the Obbligato film in oil cap, they have a 30uf and 70uF 630v. All of the really really nice film caps are around the 250v range, which I think might be risky in my amp as the schematic says for 450v, but the actual amount of voltage across that point is probably closer to 250. Also looking for a 220uF 500v cap upgrade as well that I beli…

So some parts are rolling in. I'm excited to finally get the solder iron up and running again. I'll jump on the balanced connections in a week or so, but I bought some extra wire and RCA connectors to build a pair of interconnects. I'll be using: DH Labs Pro Studio for the wire. Twisted pair inside with a shield outside (pretty standard) DH Labs RCA-3 connector. Now, the RCA-3 connector is a little different than what I have used in the past. It looks like this: It looks very much like these would be great for a digital cable (and they are 75 ohm as well). For audio, though, I have a twisted pair inside the cable with the shield outside. I'm fairly sure…

I want to experiment with making some data only USB cables. Looking at the specs of the bulk USB cable by lcomm it shows 28awg twisted for the data lines. Is it ok to use stranded?

Well as a natural progression in this hobby, I find myself with more gear than power cords. In the past I have built power cords with 12 GA wire from Ram Electronics and VH Audio but the ones I have built are too damn stiff. All of my gear sits fairly close to the wall so I need a flexible medium weight cable for my power cord builds. I looked at the bulk cable offered at Take Five and Sonic Craft but they are a little on the expensive side and too heavy to stay properly seated in the IEC. Any recommendations for bulk cable would be appreciated.

Anyone else get the following email this weekend/today? modu Case made in Italy by Hi-Fi 2000 We would like our kind customer to know that the Galaxy, Slim and Dissipante series are now available in full aluminium see here modushop.biz and it is already possible to customize them. Click here modushop.biz Modu Staff A bit expensive, more of a jump from the standard pricing than I would have thought. Oh yeah, I got this email 3 times yesterday, and once (so far) today

the output on my Zhaolu is too high. I have had some issues with it in the past, but never that bad. However with my two most recent purchases, a Marantz Sr7001 receiver and a MPX3 SLAM I am running into problems. The Marantz's Peak light shows and the sound gets distorted at times because it can't handle the inputs and I can't turn the volume up past 7 o'clock on my mpx3. I've considered getting some of those RCA adapters to reduce gain by 3db or 6db, but I realize that is not an ideal fix. So does anyone have any experience with the Zhaolu 1.3? Can I change the gain on it?

I will have a stock HD650 cable in a week which I was going to use for the connectors. I was going to make a 2.5 meter cable terminated in 2 female XLR plugs. And I was thinking of using silver plated copper, which is pretty easy to find on ebay for cheap in long runs. What I'm concerned about is what gauge should I get? I don't mind a stiff cable as I'm sitting in one spot when I listen, but a bit of flexibility is good too. I was thinking 26 or 28 AWG? In a litz braid up to the Y split

....so I bought one of these. They popped up on Massdrop while I was talking to Kevin who immediately called BS on this. My curiosity peaked, I had to get one. Here is the product page: https://www.bursonaudio.com/products/supreme-sound-opamp-v5i/ BS meter is tingling so I waited for it to arrive: Nice enough box and here are the internals: I forgot to take a picture of the top but it looks exactly as it did on the page. Here is the bottom though: The potting compound is pretty soft so here is what I found: So... the only thing in there is an opamp with the top markings sanded off and one small cap. There is noth…

I've posted this already on another well-known headphone forum, here however I see DIY is more prominent. I'm thinking about bying an used pair of ESP 950s and seriously modding them. I've considered making a totally DIY ESL headphone, but making the headband and enclosures for them is too much for my limited skills. Kosses though seem to be a fine ESL headphone as they are, and from pictures of their insides on Wikiphonia it seems that there are some mods easily possible. 1) Removing damping and maybe adding 'phase corrector' like on old Fostex T50 - a felt ring which suppresses high frequencies coming from outer parts of their drivers to even out phase and f…

I bought a replacement tip for the iron labeled Aoyue brand but seller claims works with the Hakko. When I replaced it in the iron the replacement tip spins sort of freely (I can rotate it with a slight bit of force) even with the nut for the protective metal guard screwed in as tightly as it will go. Is it supposed to do this? Thanks guys.

Any preferrences on these? Biggie.

http://cgi.ebay.com/OLD-Fluke-407DR-Plate-Filament-Rack-Tube-Power-Supply_W0QQitemZ160184703511QQihZ006QQcategoryZ58287QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem If you have room for this thing...