Do It Yourself

Background: Just for fun, I'm going to build an energizer using a small Class-D power amplifier and a transformer. The inspiration was that I'm basically junking my recently-purchased and rejected Topping EHA5 and O can use the chassis and connectors. The rest I plan to junk. I bought a high voltage DC-DC converter for the bias voltage and a pair of toroidal transformers meant for a tube amplifier. The transformers are so big I may have to mount them on top of the Topping Chassis! For the amp I'm hoping that the Texas instruments TPA3116d2 Class D chip will do a good job. If I don't like the soun of this chip, I'm only out $10 for a populated board from Amazon!!! OK…

Colors Sovietized for effect * this should be in DIY forum

I did search but I couldn't find a dedicated thread about DIY electrostatics so in the spirit of getting the discussion started, here is something I've been working on. Well over a decade ago I bought up all the spare Sennheiser HE60 parts to assemble new headphones. The first thing to go out of stock was the main housing so to assemble the last pair, I had to adept a HD650 housing to take the HE60 drivers. Ever since then it has stuck in my head to make my own drivers for those housings and well... here is version 2.0: I bought a ratty old HD650 and completely stripped it apart. Headpad, earpads and cable went into the trash while the rest went for a l…

Anyone have CFA3, GRLV, or headphone protector boards available for sale? Thanks!

Hello, new to Head-case, but an experienced elec tech. After demoing a friend's, I'd like to build a balanced Dynahi, but am having troubles tracking down documentation and boards. Can anyone steer me in the right direction? Thanks!

So I'm turning one of my garage bays into a workshop. I'm able to fit 8' x 10' with a 9' 6" ceiling no problem. I need some ideas on counter surfaces and cabinets. I'd need some storage, an area for a desktop and 4-6 amps, 2 dacs, and a preamp. Lastly an area to work on projects. Is there an online layout tool that doesn't have a huge learning curve or anyone on here that can do a layout? I'd gladly throw a few bucks their way for some time.

My beloved KGSSHV died, one channel went up in smoke. Tried to fix it but I cannot find the fault. Would you be willing to help troubleshoot? I’ll gladly pay for any help, want to get my amp back to work.

Hi, I recently bought an L300LE, and unfortunately the mechanical part of the headset is rather poor...particularly the plastic frame and the headband adjustment, the former desitinated to break with use because it was too fragile, the latter simply does not hold the set position due to the weight of the headset...I had to put bluetack on it to lock the two slides in place the aluminum frame of the 700 is much better.. but the cost is insane! simply crazy! has anyone made anything DIY to replace these shoddy parts?

I think I'll ask santa for a good desoldering station this Christmas. It would be for through hole work, can anyone recommend one that works well for them?

so due to a comment i made over there, someone wanted to know if i had the eddie current dht filament schematic. here it is. eddiecurrentfilament.PDF

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Hello! I am building a set of DIY headphones in a headphone shell that has a 50mm mount. I could also add an adapter to accommodate a 40mm driver. I am looking for a nice driver for this shell. I tried two different drivers from Aliexpress and neither were very good. Any suggestions?

Hi All... Anyone up for a group buy of IXCP10M90S ? This place below seems to have 146 of them and is in Florida. I know I need them for a bunch of projects and could wait but I'm thinking this might be good for everyone. Has anyone ordered from this place before? https://store.nacsemi.com/Products/Detail?part=IXCP10M90S&stock=XSJMZ0000019254&Mfr=IXYS&auth=n&utm_campaign=listing&utm_source=findchips&utm_medium=aggregator&utm_content=textlink&instock=y I'll run it like my others in the past. I'd say 7-10 people is all we need. I'm in for 30

hey, i wanted to build a kgsshv as a fun project but since i am a beginner i figured out i would be better off starting with something more simple. so, how do i start? also which tools i need for the measurements and building? (sorry if this post is redundent)

I could not help but notice that the dead tree carcass machinists have a thread on wood machining. But dead trees do not make the best cases for stax amplifiers. So i'm a little surprised that there is no thread dedicated to CNC machining metal. The motivation for this thread was that I turned 50 years old a few weeks ago and for my birthday I decided to buy myself a CNC machine so that I could make my own cases for my stax builds. I decided to buy the foxalien Vasto, https://www.foxalien.com/products/cnc-router-machine-vasto?sca_ref=725103.t6qfXeHAnx based on not much more than I needed to machine 400mm by 400mm and the reviews on youtube are very positive. I'm waiting f…

I was going to name it 'Double the Carbon, double the voltage, double the fun', but I'm afraid that would be too wordy. Ever since I measured the output swing capability of the Carbon, I wanted to see if it can drive my ESL speakers. To do that, I'd need a beefed-up version that can output at least 1kVrms before clipping. That's 1414V peak, out of a ±750V to ±800V PSU. To simply scale up the Carbon amp and the GRHV PSU without major changes to the PCBs, a few hurdles would have to be overcome. First is the 900-V rated 10M90s in the cascode CCS that bottom out with ±450V PSU. When I was browsing the high voltage FETs at Mouser, I found the UnitedSiC UF3N170400B. …

This is a very niche topic so if you are not planning to buy or write programs for the Keithley 2015 or 2016 thd or p multi-meters then this post will probably not be interesting to you - especially given their skyrocketing prices on ebay and their age. If you are planning to buy one because it has audio analysis built in then there are a number of limitations and issues you should be aware of before deciding to buy. Some of these limitations effect the accuracy and validity of its calculations and are not documented in the manual, some of the limitations effect usability and some effect it programmatically if you access it through gpib or rs232. If you look on the i…

Hi All... I was cleaning up and found a pair of Electraprint OPT that I had wound for headphone impedance. I've attached the values. I got these for a build of tubelab's TSE that has now changed to a TSE II. My plan was to use 45 tubes for the output, that would give me 1-2 watts. The headphones I use are HE-560 and HE-6 SE. I have HD-650 and Beyer DT-770 (250 Ohm) as well. My thinking was to start with the 32 ohm tap and connect them directly to the headphones. I don't want to fry the headphones or blow my ear drum if something goes wrong so I'm looking for a sanity check. Should I build it for headphones and use these OPT's or abandon them and get a new set …

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…

Anyone ever try something like this? https://audioxpress.com/files/attachment/2685 I wanted to see if I could find something passive that would take an unbalanced signal from a preamp and convert it o a balanced output. Is this worth trying? Or would I damage the balanced amp?

Cases and heatsinks are a problem for DIY builds. Front panels of thick alloy need machining and tapping as do heatsinks. These items are hard to get machined or the sizes the builder wants are not available. I devised a way of making cases, which eliminated these problems and made for easier case design, lower costs and quicker builds. Cases Made from sheet aluminium alloy of preferably 3mm so only single sheet of material needed. I get the parts laser cut by a company which will also supply the material. The case parts need holes to be countersunk where necessary and are then taken for surface finishing, (bead blasting and anodising in my cas…

I want to make a couple sets using different coax cable available on the net. I want to use solder connectors not compression. I'm looking for something flexible. I've ordered Belden GS-4 and some 26 AWG shielded silver plated from navships. Anybody used Belden 1505F?

I'll soon have the need to switch between two different sources and amps and I'm two projects behind even starting my preamp. I want to put together a 2 in 2 out switch. If I use 4P2T switches how should I manage the shield (pin 1)? Or should I use 3P2T2D and not worry? I'm just trying to see if I can get away with 1 deck instead of two?

Hello everyone, I had started to post my attempts to build a modified KSA-5 klone over in the "krell ksa5 klone" thread, when I realized that I should create an own topic because my build would not be an exact clone... so this here is then exactly that. I will copy the previous posts here and delete there! Cheers, Alex. Hey folks, here is a first view on my take of this amplifier. I want to be able to attach the power transistors on one side via an L-bracket to a single heat sink. The power distribution sequence layout was kept in place but of course I had to do a little re-arranging. The original input stage is more or less unchanged. Both t…

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