Do It Yourself

I'm just finished school about to be working as an electrician and my teacher swears by butane soldering irons. She's had the same one for 20 years. It looks like they can be used for melting heatshrink too. Does anyone have any experience with these?

Hi new to the forum and I am interested in building a kgsshv or kgsshv carbon. I have done other projects from amb.org built a beta22 / lcdduino / volume control system. I am unaware if there are any guides or published places to get information on where to start these builds / parts lists? I have found the circuit board gerber files and I am guessing I have to send those to get my pcbs manufactured? But I am a bit confused as there are many versions and variations of build files. For example I see Kgsshvcarbon v1-6 and along eith them left / right / servo / ground. Any advice would be appreciated.

When I found out that amb had designed a single-rail version of the σ22 power supply I thought it sounded just about perfect for my Squeezebox3 power supply project. Here are the preliminary results. This PS is actually for a friend but mine will be very similar with just tweaked casework. If you want more info on this PS have a look here. I did just a little testing tonight and the new PS definitely seems to have helped the anemic base that the SB3 DAC has with the stock PS. More on that later when I can back to back it with the DAC I'm currently using.

I was inspired by Frank Cooter's PTP wiring amps he took to the LA meet. So inspired in fact, that I was thinking on building Kevin's KGTT. Besides him and Kerry (and probably Birgir), is there anybody out there who has built it and could post pics of their builds? My first clumsy attempt at a layout looks bad and it won't improve until I get all the components and have an idea of their size and shape. Hopefully it was done right A wood case, which I have never done, also sounds interesting. KGTT Layout a.pdf

I am looking for a nice metal enclosure for a summer tube amp project. The requirements: Size: Approx 12 X 12 X 3. This is a bit flexible, and it can be oddlong as well. Material: Metal Color: I would prefer black Cost: I'd like to keep it about $50-$75. more toward the low end, though.

I've been thinking about upgrading to a better soldering station. I am just a hobbyst so the tool is mostly for DIY work. I started out wanting to limit my budget to $200 US. As always the case, once I started reading stuff on the web, I am more and more tempted by those that are way over my budget. Right now, I am looking seriously at: 1. A JBC CD-1BD for around $400 2. A Hakko FX951-66 for around $260 I would love to hear your experience, experience and recommendations. Thanks!

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?

I was going thru my stash to see if I had enough to build a Dynamight and found that I'm short a pair of each of these. I then found that they aren't available anymore Does anyone have (2) of each they would sell, or barring that, anyone know what the singles of these are (if there is such an animal)? If not, would something like matched pairs of 2SA970 / 2SC2240s work?

I need to pick up three sets of tube sockets for my Dared 845 amp and I assume I need 2 pcb mount 12ax7, 2 6sn7 pcb mount (do they make a 7n7 pcb mount?) and a pair of 845 bayonet type sockets. I really prefer high quality over saving a few bucks. Any ideas on where to buy also ceramic and teflon is one better than the other? The reason I ask is I found a local tech here in the East Bay (SF area) that will do the work if I source the sockets. Great older guy who grew up in the radio and recording industry. Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide.

Well cheap compared to all the monster amps out there So correctly done, one would do the Uberamp2-Raal edition, which results in something really big,heavy and lot of heat. And a custom and large chassis, and a pile of $$$ This is a bit cheaper and easy enough for just about anyone to do. From the Ti Opa541 datasheet, showing paralled opamps good for at least 7 amps rms of output into anything including a dead short... Designed to be mounted directly to the heatsink, amp board right angle to the heatsink. All wires to the board directly soldered, 4 oz copper highly recommended. Power supplies are a minimum of 24V at 10 amps, like this, but more …

I think I'm moving on from Par-Metal. I can't get them on the phone any more and email response is spoty. Has anyone found a chassis supplier on Ebay that can sell something better? I'm looking for boxes that are 16" wide x 12 - 16" deep by 4" high and where I can have front and rear panels milled by FPE

ok, I'm finishing up a Twisted Pear Buffalo DAC using the soon to be released Legato III I/V output stage. I intend to use the BAL/SE stage in the beginning since all of my headphone amps are single ended. However I want to build a balanced headphone amp. It will be the balanced dynahi or M³ and I'm concerned about the statement below from Twisted Pear. What does this mean if I build a balanced M³ or dynahi rev2?

Hopefully I'm at the right place this time. I want to build a kevin gilmore blue hawaii amp. As a starting point I found the original http://headwize.com/?page_id=751 and the more recent http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/BlueHawaii-T2-Servo-v1-2.zip (needs LTSpice). Is there a recent version without servo, with PCB's and all that? CCS is yet partly diskussed, has someone experiance with "mu follower Output" to decouple the complex loads partly from the tubes (see schematic)? What about a PS if no 500V pnp is found? From the PSRR viewpoint I'd start with the concept: "care about higher harmonics, PSRR can start to decrease at a cut-off in the 1 kHz region. And: …

Looking forward to someday having one of these built.

We have lots of info on good parts, but I can't seem to find good tools. I don't mean multimeters and soldering irons, I mean the guys that do the hard work but go unnoticed, like helping hands and wire strippers. In my experience, the standard helping hands thing from PartsExpress is a little flimsier than I'd like, and I don't know how to determine a good wire stripper since I only have the one from a group buy with not enough sizes. Feel free to throw in whatever cool tools you like too, because what is a man without his tools?

Crossposted from diyaudio: http://www.onsemi.com/pub/docs/pcn/PD20685.pdf On-semi are discontinuing all of their TO-92 products because of a disagreement with a subcontractor. List includes all the MPSWs.... //UFN

As somewhat of a learning experience, I decided to build a PSU using the kgbhultraminipsV4 board (KGBH). All seemed to go well in assembly, and I tested every adjacent solder point for proper continuity, and ensured no cold solder joints. Used proper heat sinks on the silicon devices wires while soldering to avoid overheating them. Cleaned the board with 99.99 alcohol. I set the board up with 2x100v and 1xs150V zeners to output 350V. I plugged it into a 300V x2 transformer (smartly using a very long extension cord in the garage) it I got a HUGE pop. I was using 5W zeners, and when they go, they really go! It was the Positive side of the PSU. One zener totally evap…

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…

the stock cable on my sennheiser HE-60's is starting to fail (intermittent right channel) normally I recable all my headphones with mogami 2534 but I am worried about sending 600V down that cable... so I am wondering what kind of cable would be appropriate? or would the 2534 probably be ok?

Has anyone ever reterminated a Cardas Sennheiser cable for the HD650? I'm thinking of buying the Fat Pipe version that HF sells in a 10ft length terminated with 1/4" TRS and then cutting that into a 5ft cable and re-terminating it in a 4 pin XLR. I want to know if the cable is laquered inside and if I have to melt the insulation off of it to solder the wires. Then I would make an extension cable and 4 pin XLR to 1/4" TRS SE adaptor with the rest

A friend asked me to come up with a phono stage that is of reasonable quality but not too over the top. Here's my first go. Basically, it is a hybrid cascode gain stage followed by a passive RIAA filter and a cathode follower. The idea is that the single gain stage should not only provide enough gain, but it should be reasonably quiet. The Zout is also governed by the plate resistor which keeps the filter stable even as tubes age. In a sense, it is much like Pete's pentode phono, other than that the cascode should be a bit quieter than a pentode. That's a lot of should's, so it remains to be seen whether it actually works. The only really tricky part I anticipate is se…

and about time... I’ve been keenly anticipating this . Here’s a link for those that are interested or have missed the news; http://www.amb.org/forum/gamma3-high-resolution-dac-development-t2656.html

Is this the new product for high voltage transistors ofr electrostatic headphone amplifiers? https://www.akhansemi.com/company.html

Any you guys know what's in this box? [url=http://www.head-fi.org/forums/6245035-post760.html]Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio - View Single Post - REVIEW: Audiotailor

Both Birgir and I have wanted one of these for quite a while, and they never seem to show up. So with a little help from one of the members here we were able to reverse engineer this one. http://gilmore.chem....rn.edu/ksa5.pdf http://gilmore.chem....rn.edu/ksa5.jpg still have work to do on the power supply. All the parts are still available, but identical and compatible parts also available. mpsw06 and mpsw56 and lsk389 I think this one is fairly cheap to do. And easy to assemble. Single channel is 10 x 3.65 inches. Single ended not really a HE6 killer, but balanced, a HE6 heavyweight for sure. If you replace the servo opamp with opa445, then you …