Do It Yourself

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?

OK, so I did something stupid and accidentally shorted the secondaries of an Avel Lindberg Y23 transformer for two seconds. The voltage seems fine after I corrected the error. Do you think it survived, and or what's the harm in using it?

Hi all, I purchased a KGSSHV recently, and whilst overall i'm very pleased with the sound, the pot installed is cheap and unfortunately has some balance issues at lower volumes. It looks to be a modular type pot, and bizarrely has 4 lugs per channel rather than 3. I've managed to get hold of what I'm told is a rather nice TKD 4CP 2500 pot, which has three lugs per channel. Can anyone offer some advice on the correct way to go about wiring it in? Looking at the old pot, there looks to be a set of bridged lugs on the far right which go directly to a piece of wire bridging the inputs at the back of the amp, as well as left/right input and output wires from t…

I'm still on my quest to build a large an powerful electromagnet. I'm wondering if I can put a non oscillating signal in one of the RCA jacks if my old crappy, "don't care if i blow it" amp will amplify the signal. Also how can I put in a non oscillating signal? Would a 1.5 volt battery work?

LOW cost way to enhance/upgrade your Grado's...never understood why plastic is used on the stock ones. http://www.ebay.com/itm/322220921728?ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649 I also wish Grado's earpads and headband were more comfy. Oh well, I DO love the Grado house sound!!

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

Can't seem to find any info or examples of these in use, but someone here must have tried them. I have found that buffers on the output of a Muses electronic volume control works very well and had good results with Sjöström Audio diamond buffers but Kevin's little PCB's might be even more compact. Can anyone remember a thread or post where these were introduced? They are a very simple circuit and could possibly do with some extra PSRR with caps right on the power pins, they are so compact I have found a neat way to stack them, in the pics below is a quad channel balanced stack, all the PBCs are connected through the power pins, leaving the i/o's separate. E…

I have a strange question. I'm running to an issue paralleling four 2SK170/2SJ74 JFETs where the noise from the degeneration resistors is something I'd like to overcome. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a scheme where at most a single sources resistor is used (i.e. all the sources are tied together before this) and some sort of a a servo arrangement is used. I'm looking for a way to avoid super tightly matched devices as well. I understand the scheme used in the Xono and say the Vendetta phonostages, as well as a number of the Borbely designs, but these aren't exactly what I want. Feedback is acceptable as well.

I've just stumbled across this http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/audio/Analog.html are there other sites of a similar intent that you can recommend. (This is to save me trawling through threads at HF. )

Has anyone had any experiences with the Furutech FP-682 or FP-681 http://www.thecableco.com/product.php?id=4201 I'm wondering whether the rhodium or gold version of these are any improvement over the Neutrik or Switchcraft alternatives. This is me window shopping connectors for a balanced Beta22.

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

Am I the only one to whom this is new? Parts Connexion

Please. Suggestions for a balanced SS amp to power LCD's. B22 seems to be the only one I can find. Thanks!

If it works it will be pretty cool: Xerox announces silver ink, keeps printable electronics dream alive

Hi. I want to ask about Raspberry Pi Camera. I am absolute beginner. I want to make a project where Raspberry Pi camera send the image to the Raspberry Pi in greyscale and based on white or black, the stepper motor will rotate forward or backward. I want to ask, is it possible to make this project using Raspberry Pi or do I need to used other microcontroller also?

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?

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?

A really good article by Nelson Pass on class A, A/B and B operation... http://passlabs.com/pdf/articles/leaving_class_a.pdf

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 …

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?

Anyone interested in a Universal Signal Isolator shield for the Arduino DUE? http://www.dimdim.gr/arduino/universal-signal-isolator-shield-for-the-arduino-due/ Found this while looking up how to add a display to my dac. I'm looking to order some boards so I thought I would see if there is any interest here

If I take say 1 120 Ohm 5 watt wire wound resistor for each channel that's sufficient for a dummy load correct?

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.

The part tested ok and seems to a 15 volt reg mc 7915ctg mc 7815ctg

The speaker protection i have uses 2 relays for stereo channel (1 relay for each channel). But I'm thinking of using it in "mono-mode" and shorting the R+L input and R+L output to make it more "robust". Will that work? (this would mean I would need 2 devices for 2 channels.) Thanks again