Do It Yourself

Hi everyone one year ago I bought two Aikido 24V and two Max Millet boards, I have assembled them with BJT and MOSFET. Great DIY project, great sound, really. The "valve sound" when I was young.... I like very much the Aikido sound with the LM317 buffer (great idea!!!!), this is my preferred headphone amply, and I like too the Millet diamond buffer stage, so why don't create a new headphone amp with the best of both Aikido and Millet? Et voil

So I was out doing errands yesterday and came across a garage sale with lots and lots of electronic stuff. Highly unusual. The guy's wife had recently passed away and he was getting rid of all of his collection over the years. Suffice it to say i bought one standard corvette's trunk worth of stuff, and will go back and get more today. Anyway he had these capacitors i had to have. He said they were for a top secret military project in the very early 1960's. There are no labels on the things, or they came off years ago. He said they were 1000 uf/5000 v caps. So i brought one into work and sure enough it really is almost exactly 1000 uf. He said they were teflon fil…

I and a few others have decided to get the new bipolar version of Blue Hawaii PCB made by PCBnet in US. I used PCBnet for the Carbon GB in 2015 (and other occasions). Their price is higher but we’ve had great experience with their board quality. The boards will be 2mm thick and 4oz copper, green solder mask and white silkscreen in leaded finish. The cost of boards is $30 USD for a set (two PCBs) if we can get 15 sets made. You’ll need to add shipping from me to you for the total cost. Kevin released this latest version of Blue Hawaii in early 2016. I worked with Kevin to trace the board and at least one headcaser has built one working amp with them. This …

Hi: I am organizing a mini group buy of HGSSHV PCB boards. I intend to move very fast so please read this post carefully if you are interested. I'll be using the kgsshvampv16mini.zip for the amp boards and kgsshvpsminifinalstn9360.zip for the PSU boards. The amp boards are the one-board-per-channel, off-board heatsink version. Both amp and PSU boards have provisions for current production parts. See here for the Gerber files and the KGSSHV thread for more information. I plan to use SeeedStudio to fabricate the PCB boards. The boards will be 2 layer, 1.6mm thickness, 2oz copper, HASL surface finish and standard green color PCB. Each set of the boards includes …

I'm quite excited about the new updates regarding the Mini? portable amplifier. http://headwize.com/ubb/showpage.php?fnum=3&tid=6936 Specs and technicalities aside (which appear positive), I'm quite surprised by the size of the amplifier. Quite small and cute if you ask me.

Hello Guys, I'm organizing a group buy for mini3 kits for europe. If you're anywhere else in the globe you're welcome too! Here's a link for the thread at HF:Mini3 group buy Manuel

I just finished making the Wenge trim piece to overlay the damaged plinth on the Mitsubishi LT-30 that I bought a few months back. I'm happy with the way it turned out. There is a very slight lip that I milled that covers the top edge of the plinth where there were a few chips. Most of the damage had been at the corner of the plinth where something had struck it and crumpled the MDF. Here's a couple before and some afters...

I published a modification for the Stax SRM-T1/T1S/006 in AudioXpress July 2017, which is just out. The modification adds 5.1 kilohm output safety resistors and cascoded constant current output loads, which with their heatsink fits the space vacated by the plate resistors - see photo. Spritzer did something similar a few years ago with an SRM-007, adding constant current loads, but he also changed to 6S4A outputs. Unlike plate resistors, constant current loads burn up practically no signal current, so while the stock amp burns up 9.2 mA signal current in the plate and feedback resistors at its specified 300 VRMS maximum output, the modified amplifier only …

Ok, I have a quick question. So, I have some of these sockets, with brackets: I need to somehow embed a nut into the bracket, so I can then secure them to the top of the chassis. I won't have access to the bottom of the socket. I don't know much about PEM nuts, but I was wondering if something like that might work. I'm leary to try an adhesive, or soldering, etc. but maybe it might work, but I'd prefer a better solution. If someone wants to make me a bracket, that's a different story, but let's assume that's not a viable option either.

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

So after seeing the 60 minutes last week, and already knowing all the liquid nitrogen cooking tricks, the chemist in me idecided to try my hand at the ravioli/caviar things with the sodium alginate. Yesterday's try was a complete disaster, but today came out almost perfect. As with all of this kind of stuff, technique is all important. Its helpful to have a stash of USP grade chemicals to pull this off... So i present mohito caviar, and mohito ravioli http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/mg1.jpg http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/mg2.jpg Maybe we can have birgir show us how to do this...Correctly

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 …

Is there a demand for another run of the classic kgss board? Show of hands please. I for one love to build it, with the new sockets coming from Justine soon. Maybe makinging fully ccs. Naming it Kgss+ ??

Someone has emailed me looking for someone to build a regulated 12v power supply that will work in france, along with the cable to make an apogee AD500 work from it. I can provide contact information, etc.

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…

Well, Pars once said that finding connectors it the (one of the) most boring part of DIY. Well, I can only say that finding a suitable multi-conductor cable might be a very close second. Here's what I'm looking for: total diameter 0.195" - 0.265" 6 conductor 400V will be the maximum potential carried, so I suppose 200V jacket is fine. I'm not sure the maximum conductor diameter, as I cannot find this stated specifically for the Switchcraft EN3 series Here's the "datasheet", perhaps someone else can find it. Switchcraft The funny thing is that they give 14awg ratings here: http://www.alliedelec.com/Images/Products/Datasheets/BM/SWITCHCRAFT/SWITCHCR…

Just been auditioning the Asus Xonar Essence One, and they sent me some of these Muses 8820 op-amps to replace the stock 5532s. My, this amp/DAC sounds pretty damn good for $599, and with the Muses ($899 is the price with these installed) it sounds very nice. Articulate, punchy, smooove! I likey. Anyone used these parts? Linky

Some guys insist MUSES 72320 is better than relay-based vol control, but I highly doubt that. Any tried that? (Let's ignore those CS3310 etc which are not so good, we only talk about that 72320)

Bought a piece of Rosewood and churned out a couple of woodies. It is an amazing specimen as far as wood goes and I hope to use it again in the future; it had a brilliant graining that shines up pretty nicely if I do say so myself. The cups on the left are a commissioned SR225 woody, and the big 'un on the right is my D2000 that some of you might have seen over on the other site. Hope to try out Cocobolo for my next project, just not looking forward to the cost :/.

i just found out there's a lot of similarities between this expensive amp and my 32 dollar headamp kits i built recently my question is: who copy who or it's just a Coincident ?

So this is the time of the year from thanksgiving to new years where i have the time to do extraordinary projects. This year is no exception. So i delivered the hydrogen torch preamp prototype to a person in chicago that happens to own a ctc blowtorch with great success. (hearafter just refered to as just hydrogen)(a hydrogen torch is at least twice the temperature of a blowtorch) But this year i wanted to do something extremely over the top just for me. And while it is not done yet, enough of it is done for a couple of pictures. So I hereby present the $5000 hammer. (in fact its going to cost way more than that) http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/hammer1…

Looks Like I'm gonna have to have a dig around in there to see if I can tell what's wrong and try to fix it. I hope it's simple like the jack connection. I'll pop it open and post some gratuitous pics in a bit...

Standard build with AD8620 for LR and 8610 for G, class A bias with JFETs, LMH6321 buffers, unity gain, 24V AC adapter. The AD8610 in the ground channel gets burning hot, and I was measuring something... DC? from power to V- or V+ of one of the leads of the 8610 and it was going back and forth. Also, the LED (this) doesn't even light up. RLED is 7.68k. I'm new to this whole thing so I'm not sure what I should be measuring and what they mean... if anyone can help I'd be forever grateful.

So my mostly completed Beta 22 arrives tomorrow and I'm taking the day off to see if I can get her finished. What does that mean to you lot I hear you say? Funny you should ask.. I'll need all hands on deck guiding me through the precarious operation to bring life to my baby. I'm still not sure what's connected and what's not or how much work is left to do so I'll need some guidance on how not to blow it up Stay tuned... tomorrow will bring pics and questions

Hi, n00b here. Please dont get out your shovels or hammers, i'm just asking a honest question. I've noticed that the term "sand" has been used a lot in the DIY Forum when referring to semiconductors. Does this mean something along the lines that transistors and diodes are made out of silicon, basically quartz "sand"? Therefore: sand = semiconductor? Since semiconductors are generally not considered "passive" devices, maybe it could be a fancy acronym for Silicon Active Node Device? I've searched high and low and could only find this totally geeked-out reference: Self-Assembled Nanodielectric. Could this explain "sand"? Or is it something else? …