Do It Yourself

It seems you bastards have finally led me to a trail of misery and pain and I feel I should repay you with dumb questions. I plan on this thread growing as my dumbness expands into more areas. I'll start with one question that's been bugging me for a little while.. Resistors. Does the power rating matter as long as they're not underrated for any particular circuit? I've seen 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 watt and so on. Does it matter as far as performance/sound goes?

GROUP BUY CLOSED 4. NOVEMBER 2015 For gauging interest. This GB is intended to be add-on to the MWL168 Carbon Group Buy for anyone interested in building a Circlotron. In addition to a full Carbon, two dual HV900 boards (circlotronhvpowerdualnewer2.ZIP) and two output & driver boards (kgsshvcarboncirclotrondriverv2.ZIP/kgsshvcarboncirclotron.ZIP) are needed. Currently investigating a quote form PCBNet for: circlotronhvpowerdualnewer2.ZIPkgsshvcarboncirclotron.ZIPkgsshvcarboncirclotrondriverv2.ZIPFurthermore FTCaps has been asked for delivery of the 470uF/550V caps required by the HV900 supply. The main difference between the 680uF/550V(76mm) cap and the 470uF/550V(6…

Anyone have experience or opinion on this K&K Audio maxxed-out phono pre-amp? Anything comparable or better for similar $$, DIY or used?

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

In my current situation I don't really have a designated area for electronics work. While trying to find a wife-accepted permanent location I've had to make due with a few impromptu work areas, all of which have really inadequate lighting. Funds are tight, but I absolutely can't afford to ruin another component attempting to forge ahead despite poor lighting conditions. I'm looking for something <$40 shipped (or bought locally) that can work well as a light for electronics work. Anyone have any suggestions on what to go for?

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 can't seem to find it as google returns no results from possible matches from this site, but I do remember somebody (think Kevin himself) discussing and posting a schematic of an updated mod to the SRM-323S to increase the output power to 450v, would be great if somebody or Kevin himself chimed in with the pdf and what needs to be removed and added in place in the 323S for MOAR powah. I've got a spare 323S lying around so want to give it a go. cheers

I'm looking to get an inexpensive bench power supply, hopefully for less than $50. Can anybody recommend one. If not, please recommend the least expensive ps that will do the job. Thanks.

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: …

This is probably going to seem like a go-to-Head-Fi thread, but I'm in a bit of a DIY and audio equipment rut, and I really trust Head-Case a whole lot more to get me out of it...... I've built myself DACs for home (Buffalo) and office (y2). I've got an M3 at the office with Audio Technica ESW9's and AD900's, I have the Exstata with SR-Lambdas at home, and I've built and sold a couple of Millett Hybrids. I'm pretty chuffed with all of this equipment, but feel that I'm still a long distance from my audio end-game and really want to keep doing more DIY. So where do I go now? I'd really like to challenge myself with something new to further my electronics skills, and keep…

As stated in title, if I can build an interconnect, can I make a power cable? Anything special I need to know so that I don't burst into flames?

First off, I'm about as much of a DIY audio builder as I am a bronze sculptor. Secondly, I recently bought an enclosure from dsavitsk that has some parts in it that were once a DAC. Specifically, it needs a 12AX7 tube and a CS8412 chip. The tube I have already of course. I did some shopping on the 'Bay and found what I believe is the right DAC chip for $6 from a Chinese seller. The rest of the iterations mentioned in this post are strictly for academic purposes. I'm genuinely curious what the differences (if any) are. The version I bought. CS8414CS for $13 The main difference here is that this one can speak hibit (24/96) and purports to have lower jitte…

Hey y'all, I've lurked around here for a few years but now I'm planning on getting started building amps, and I could use a bit of assistance. I've never soldered anything and I've probably stripped a wire once, so I'm gonna need to ease into this. From what I've read here and on Innerfidelity the Bottlehead Crack or Torpedo would be good places to start, as they're simple builds and pair well with my HD650s. Any other suggestions? I read this plan on getting the Hakko FX-888 as my solder 'gun' and 63-37 eutectic solder. According to tangentsoft I need small screwdrivers, small cutters and pliers, and a wire stripper. Are any other supplies needed? After this…

Hey- Roundabouts how much would a balanced b22 cost to have built (by someone else, not me)? just a range, thanks.

just curious, has anyone tried using other tubes in the Blue Hawaii than the 6CA7/EL34? I ended up with a set of boards, and was looking at some datasheets over the weekend. I started looking at the 6BG6GE, 3D21A/WB/7403, 12E1, EL360, 6146, etc.... I started looking more at the 3D21A, but noted that the one major concern is that the transconductance is about half that of the EL34 which means that the gain will probably be about 6dB lower than the EL34, and depending on headroom in the cathode drive circuit this could result in significantly higher distortion. (Also, I might not get enough voltage swing without making other changes that would raise the source impedance …

I got my Buffalo DAC yesterday. I'm having a few problems with the IVY stage, but when I've had it working correctly it sounds flippin' sweet. I do wonder, though, if I can do better for an output stage. Of course, there's the zapfilter, but I imagine using some nice transformers for the I/V conversion or maybe some autoformers would be pretty tops. Anyone have any experience on best sounding method for I/V conversion? Tubes? Opamps? Transformers? Simple resistor (and differences between resistor brands)?

I've got a couple normal bias Staxen I'd like to build an amp for, any ideas for any simple mods to make a normal bias KGST? Edit: apologies if this is a simple mod, I've done searches but what comes up is for going the other direction (normal->pro)

So I sent my K1000 to Fitz a little while back for a re-cable. Today upon removing the wire mesh grills Fitz discovered someone's handiwork... Nice huh? The person I bought them from mentioned that they had new drivers installed, but forgot to mention the custom port in the side of one driver! He also never mentioned they were installed by anyone other than AKG. I've looked back through PMs here and there to discover who the seller was, but sadly can't find the PMs. I also can't find the sale ad. I do remember he was a young kid from England, and it would have been around November of 2008 when I purchased them. Not that I'd get any satisfaction monetarily, b…

So this is the time of the year from thanksgiving to new years where i have the time to do extraordinary projects. This year is no exception. So i delivered the hydrogen torch preamp prototype to a person in chicago that happens to own a ctc blowtorch with great success. (hearafter just refered to as just hydrogen)(a hydrogen torch is at least twice the temperature of a blowtorch) But this year i wanted to do something extremely over the top just for me. And while it is not done yet, enough of it is done for a couple of pictures. So I hereby present the $5000 hammer. (in fact its going to cost way more than that) http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/hammer1…

As many of you know, I for one have stopped releasing all new designs for a few years now after I got fed up with people building crap and claiming it was somehow connected to Kevin or I. Now this also means I don't release the PCB's for many of the older projects as I want to change something and often... make them smaller. So this hasn't stopped people selling crap with our circuits but at least they don't get any of the updates. Now here is an amp I saw come up for sale in Japan a while ago. The new owner contacted Kevin to try and trouble shoot it but yeah, we don't offer any real help with these things. Something about the PSU did peak my interest so when …

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So I am just about to start building an M3. I have several questions and was hoping to clear them up here. If these questions have already been answered feel free to point me to another site/thread. I think M3, M^3 and MMM are too short search terms but I got nada in thread titles. My plan is to build an M3 using the AD8610s, with adjustable gain. I would like to use switch-controlled digital potentiometers for both the gain and the volume, but I haven't finished designing that circuit yet (and I also haven't found a readout LCD w/ microcontroller mini board suitable yet) so in the meantime I am going with an RK27 for volume and a gain of 8. I only have low impeda…

I'm thinking about using the 4 gang ALPS pot for my dynahi. I want to mount it on a pcb but I don't see any available so I thought if I took two epsilon 27 boards I could make one. The first board would fit the front, the second board looks like it would need the front trimmed off to fit the back section. The grounds are tied together on those boards so I'm not sure how that comes into play since I've never wired a pot for balanced audio before. How do you wire a volume pot for balanced audio and do you think this would work?

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…

I assume frontpanelexpress.com is who I want to use if I want a 3.5"x2" engraved faceplate made for my amp? I'm messing around with their software right now, any tips? Thanks