Do It Yourself

Ok don't start.. It's the only place nearby that stocks them. So anyone tried any of their crap? I see they have numerous irons from pistol grip 40W to Pencil 15W and adjustable butane 25-50W. Any recommendations on power/type etc for phone wires and circuit DIY work?

I have some of these Chinese "CMC" type RCA Jacks. They have a knurled ring that has indents for some type of PIN wrench. What do you guys have for these to keep them from getting scratched up via pliers? PIC

I have had my beloved ATH-L3000 for many years now. It has developed a frayed cable around the split: I am seeking advice as to possible next steps. Right now, it is not causing any performance issue (has not broken connection). As a safety measure, I have wrapped the entire junction with some blue painters tape to hold it all in place - not ideal. Questions: Is a replacement original cable (NOS) available? - checked with AT - they had no real response - said send it in.. Try to repair the junction? - not much room to work and secure. Is a compatible replacement available (equal quality)? Possible third party cable replaceme…

I was just wondering how this amp would work as a headphone amp. It doesn't have a headphone jack but the speakers are connected with rca plugs into rca jacks on the back of the amp. It is rated at 1.2 watts at 1000 Hz with 10% distortion. I read that it puts out .75 watts per channel with very low distortion into 8 ohm speakers. My question is how would it work to connect headphones directly to the speaker jacks with an adapter? Would any modifications need to be made? These little amps actually sound really good with small bookshelf speakers and are dirt cheap. Thanks a lot, Gene PS I have asked this same question on several forums this morning. Sorry if …

I'm finally going to get back to some DIY projects. One that's been boxed away is the Bijou. Part of the reason is I want to get a case design going in my head before I get too far on the soldering. And the problem with this is I really am not seeing the kind of case I was hoping for. Oh well. Onward. My last ditch effort will be to use a fairly boxy-shaped HiFi2000 case. It is 12.20 x 11.02 x 3.14. My main concern, and the question for y'all: with this layout, am I going to pick up any RF with the transformer so close to the two amp boards at the front of the case? They will be about 6" away from a Hammond 370DAX . Here's a pic of the case size. Thanks! …

I wasn't really sure where to post this, a friend at work has a set of K701's whose cable has apparently crapped out, can anyone offer any advice on who he might contact to see about getting them recabled at a reasonable price?

I know I've seen it here before, but couldn't find it with a couple of searches. Someone told me to avoid the auto center punches at harbor freight and get one from ebay. I took a look on ebay, and see a number of $4.95 ones, plus some Starrett's that are going to go over $10 or $15. Any recommendations? Thanks, Chris

Looking for DIY amp cases that resemble the ARC amps. So must be silver and the love handles are a nice touch Needs to be around 16" length along the front of the case. Thanks guys!

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…

Hi forum, I've recently purchased a set of Sennheiser headphone with no microphone. As my intended use was for the pc, i've purchased a few cheap headphones with mic to try and mod a mic onto my headphone. Unfortunately everything was going great until I reached a point where i had to dismantle this metal part from the line of the microphone, which resulted in me cutting into the cord by accident, so now I've just decided to strip the cord completely trying to figure out how i can connect / solder it back together. (Will have to buy the soldering equipment) Below I've attached an imagine of it all, this microphone was originally attached to the turtle beach XC1 xbox he…

Any easy way to remove the magnets from speakers? I have some little 4 and 5" drivers I replaced in one of my cars and would love to keep the magnets.

Hey guys, I finally found a good home in a small space for the Moth Cicadas I purchased many moons ago, and the room is conducive enough that I can really notice a bit of variance in the drivers. I have a set of unused spare drivers I'd like to sub in, to see if they are more to my liking. The only trouble is, I have no clue how to remove the old drivers. The cicada enclosure is ported, but the port is too small to fit a hand in, so I can't push the driver out from the back. It fits in the cabinet pretty snugly, so I don't have enough room to fit a spudger in around the edge and pry it up. Furthermore, being paper cones, I run the risk of damaging the old driver is I …

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?

I have some gear that I've had a long time and have not fired them up in a long time. 2 Adcom GFA-555s 1 Pair Martin Logan Monoliths They are all around 20+ years old. The amps have spent some time in the garage in South FL. Should I just recap the cross-overs in the spkrs and the amps? I'm afraid to power them up. The woofers need the surrounds rebuilt anyhow. Just worried that firing them up would take out the boards if the caps were bad. I think I know the answer but thought I would ask anyhow.

Anyone have about qty 16 1/8watt 10 ohm 1% resistors and qty 6 1/8watt 5 ohm 1% resistors RN55D or other metal film should work let me know if you have them Thanks, Pete

What standards are people using for reterminating these? I'm planning on a single 4-pin XLR rather than 2 3-pin as it is less cumbersome. Does a male connector on the phones with pin 1 for R+, 2 for R-, 3 for L-, and pin 4 for L+, and 2 and 3 connected together for use in single ended amps sound right? Also, anyone know the stock Grado wire colors before I cut this thing apart? If it matters, these are RS-1's bought about 6 years ago.

Sorry to start a new topic on this, but I thought if I posted it on a previous thread it would get lost. The issue with the original power supply was that it was noisy at times. I had originally measured < 2 mV power supply noise, and 3 - 5 mV noise at the amp outputs. But on re-measuring, the power supply noise was > 5 mV with the amp output noise measuring around 50 mV. In fact, the noise measured before and after the regulator was similar. Thinking the regulator was noisy, it was rebuilt with new devices, without improvement. Since the current source (CCS) in the positive supply line should block noise from the raw positive supply, the likely …

DIY Gods, I'm trying to find out if there are any good but not excessively expensive 3-way rotary speaker output selector switches available that any of you DIYers may know about. I'll also want a regular 3-way rotary input selector switch but have no idea which are decent and which are crap. My plan is to eventually integrate a Stax transformer, headphone transformer and regular speaker outs in an amp and want to have a nice big selector knob for them. That way I can have one integrated amp that can run anything I'm ever likely to own and have ample power to drive any and all difficult loads. Any recommendations?

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 …

I remember reading in a post somewhere that Frank was nice enough to release his schematic for his DHT amp, the dynamic version not the electrostat version. I would like to take a look at it. I'll send him a PM at headfi as well.

Does anyone here have experience with the SEN I/V stage? I want to try this with my BIII http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/195483-zen-cen-sen-evolution-minimalistic-iv-converter.html

Can the popular replacement cables be reterminated to balanced, (i.e are they 4 condutor all the way to the plug)? Like Equinox, Blue/Silver Dragon, Zu mobius, Cardas etc? Cheers Pete

Greetings. I recently bought a used Sennheiser HD600 from a friend for practically nothing more than a song, knowing it had problems with the cable on the right side. There is intermittent continuity, so the audio keeps cutting out if the cable is moved just so. I know there are several manufacturers that make replacement cables such as Clou and Cardas, but I don't feel like spending CAD$200 on -wire- right now. (yes, some of you will call me insane for not immediately picking up the Cardas or Clou cable. Well to that I say phthptftphfftt!!! ) Anyways, I was wondering if anyone knows where to get the seemingly proprietary connectors that Sennheiser uses in their headphon…

Thread for discussion of the Shiguraki clone "Shigaclone" CD transport I have a couple at my friends place in Canada I should get them shipped sometime...

My previous query(ies) may have gotten buried. Given the somewhat religious fervor this topic seems to generate on other forums (without much technical justification for the most part; just assumption), I would like to know people's thoughts on this. My take from other reading seems to be if not shunt then you are a) a dumb ass, or b ) you just don't appreciate the best. I did read a critique/analysis on topic that discussed shunts presenting a more uniform impedance to the load, but then went into a discussion of a push-pull relationship via a shunt, versus a push only relationship with a linear reg. My specific interest is in a Salas shunt vs. GRLV plus for a phono…