Do It Yourself

I've been playing around with vinyl rigs again for a while now. Some of you will remember that I was going to build a custom plinth for a Mitsubishi LT-30 a while back, but ended up just overlaying the plinth with Wenge. Well with my greatest resource at hand (luvdunhill) I opted for a completely custom table a while back. I purchased most of the parts earlier, but am just now finding a little free time to build the plinth. I went back and forth on the design several times, and almost ended up using some soapstone slabs. But in the end I decided on wood. Specifically the core of the plinth will be alternating layers of 3/4" MDF and Baltic Birch plywood. 6 layers to …

Partsconnexion: 15% off all film caps until Oct. 31st (20% off Jensens?) Soniccraft: 15% off everything (in stock only, check Specials page for a few exceptions)

Just a head's up: Fry's has the Hakko 936 in their weekend advert (at least in the Atlanta area) for $50.00. (Can someone please change the title to Hakko 936. Thanks)

For the last few months I've lost all my motivation for DIY. I have parts to complete quite a few projects but all my motivation is gone... I haven't been listening alot of music too... I haven't fired the soldering iron probably in 6 months... Any ideas to help me get back DIYing? I'm sure some of you had this problem! Thanks in advance! Manuel

Hey gang- When I bought my Hagerman Bugle a while back, Jim set the gain high so it would work with the DL-103. While the sound was excellent, I found there was too much hiss present in my setup, and went to a SUT + MM phono combo. Today I was looking at the Bugle and thinking it would be nice to get the gain lowered so that I could run it from my SUT and compare it to my Bottlehead Seduction. Can any friendly DIYer give me a rough idea of what would have to be done to get the gain on this sucker back down to stock levels?

Porn and the Art of Vacuum TubeFabrication - Weblog - Mxrk Now that's what I call DIY

Hi All, I have an abundance of 6sn7 family tubes and I wish to make a headphone amplifier using ONLY the 6sn7 throughout. I have been looking but cant find anything - Either OTL or TX output, I dont mind, I would think that the 6sn7, especially in parallel would have enough juice to supply my Sennheiser HD650. Please, any suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks to anyone who cares to answer! DerrO

I'm sorta intrigued by this unit: anyone know much about it? Also, anyone heard the AVC TVC units from Diy HiFi (i.e. Django, etc.) 50/50% Permalloy Core Autoformer 28 step (Pair) | Diy HiFi Supply Of course there is the S&B, Sowter, and Jensen (and probably Lundahl) .. any others to consider? This would be used in conjunction with an active preamp. What is the general consensus of TVC used in this type of situation?

Memory Distortion Philosophies I have no idea what he's talking about... but the way his design blatantly goes against all "audiophile design philosophy" is rather intriguing

I've acquired some parts that need to be put to use... don't know what project would be appropriate though. I've got 2 PCBs for an adjustable power supply that can put out a max output of 2A and a voltage of under 25V. I've also got some tube prototype boards with 2 9-pin sockets on each, like this: What I need is an idea of what I can do with these parts... something with 12au/x7 perhaps?

so, I've been playing around with some diodes on a power supply and found some I like, but I think I'm cutting it too close with the current rating. The transformer is 82VCT 50VA R-core and I have a 300mA fuse on each rail after the main supply capacitance, which is around 3000uF per rail. I wouldn't expect any more than 300mA per rail, hence the fuse choice. That being said, there is in-rush and the like to consider, and blowing a bridge isn't too exciting in my book. So, without admitting how stupid I was, and how low I went... in your opinion, what's a good rule of thumb?

Just curious if any of our excellent DIY gang are planning on building one of these? I have no immediate plans for one, but I'd love to see the build in progress if anyone is heading down that path.

Could anyone who has succesfully built an issue free AlienDAC post your BOM? I will be placing my parts order through mouser or digikey on Friday and want to make sure I get it all in one fell swoop. I spent some time reading the long thread over at HF and it seems like to many people tried something different and it didn't work out. This will only be the second audio gizmo I've built (1st was a CMOY) so any other comments or advice would be appreciated.

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 :/.

Recently I built a set of 5 strand braid of 18 gauge Jena cryo treated wire for XLR interconnects. They sound great in my system. I have seen references that the Jena wire is considered pricey ($5 ft.) for copper cable. I am wondering is there is a less expensive alternative that still maintains the quality of the Jena wire. I would most like to hear from members who have listened to the Jena as well as any recommended alternatives. But if that is too restrictive, then comments on wire you have personal experience with is fine. I'd rather that the discussion focus on the sound quality of the various cables and bypass discussion of any other recent controversies wit…

Hi all, I'm wanting to try building a cost effective ss amp but with opamps I can change out. Something with a small footprint. Is there any sort of Diy in the range of say $200?? THX

Per the drawing below, where's the best place to solder the ground wire?

So I am getting ready to order a Hakko 936 as my cheap-o irons have pretty much had it. Which soldering tips do you guys recommend? I'm not real big on single use tools, so which tip would you consider the swiss army knife for the Hakko? I will be soldering my first SMD parts so something that runs the gammut would be great. Thanks

It occurred to me a while back that my rig has gotten to a point that in terms of headphone amps it'll be pretty damn hard to beat what I have and that continuing to build more headphone amps is probably pretty silly. Where does that leave me? cue JBLoudG20 and Reks Speakers! Now I was talking with Pete the other day about basic speaker amp projects, specifically the design set forward in the boozhound labs howto pages. I had been looking at that project for a long time and had gathered about half the parts that I needed to complete the build but I was thinking of making some changes (different rectifier and input tubes) and solicited Pete's advice to make sure I did…

I've been getting back into guitar lately and think I'll want to put together an amp relatively soon to replace the cheap starter I'm using. Anyone have any ideas on a good one to put together?

I'm finally going to break down and start doing my own soldering, and thought that maybe I'd make some adapters so that I can use other sorts of tubes in my Singlepower (tube complement == 3 x 6sn7's). 7n7's should be easy --they're just a rewire. It was suggested that I try 5687's. Based on this: and other posts (mostly from Jacob), it seems that it's not a straight rewire. Anyone have any idea what the "schematic" would be? Any others that are straight rewires that I should also try? Thanks for any info.

i have the next 3 weeks to kill before school starts again. id like to do something productive with my time. i dont know anything about electronics (well i know a little but assuming that i dont know even that will probably be safer for me). i would like to start working on either an amp or a dac that is fairly easy to build. cost is a slight issue so the whole thing should be less than $100 including tools. i already have a soldering iron but no solder. also, i dont know how to read a schematic, much less know how to plan out the layout of the build, so step by step instructions would be highly appreciated. pictures would go a long way too. lastly, id like to build s…

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.

so, I'm working on a rear panel for a preamp. I'm going to use the high-density Neutrik XLR connectors and some nice compact RCA connectors. So, what do you think so far? (rename the .txt to .fpd to see the entire panel, not just the subsection that the .jpg is zoomed in on) I still need to add a umbilical cable connector (6 conductor) and a barrel jack and tidy things up a bit... Opinions? Preamp-Rear.txt

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?