Leaderboard

Milo and I got the speaker boxes mostly complete today. Made some round holes and some rectangular panels. Tweeter holes are in the Cherry baffles only, as they're not deep enough to need holes in the MDF panel too. Woofer holes and port tube holes in back. Cherry baffles got milled and drilled as well. And the first coat of Arm-R-Seal. The fluting is strictly aesthetics.

Second day in Sydney, lovely city this is. We're very close to the Harbor....when we got here, we took a walk down to the harbor and looked through a nice local market at an area called the Rocks. Got some absolutely amazing licorice there, the maker is a fucking genius at bringing some of the most unexpected ingredients together to make a delicious treat. Then got a distant pic of the Opera House (we'll tour it later), but some big-ass thing was in the way. Today, we did a hop-on-hop-off tour of the city, stopped in a few places including Bondi Beach, Chinatown, several market areas, and then I walked back to the hotel while Karen is still shopping Lot of walking, but enjoying this a lot!

I acquired 10 boxes of my friends' record collection that I helped amass and listened to daily during high school. Picked a 12" Echo and the Bunnymen for sentimental value and then something else I haven't heard in years. Fun stuff.

Dinner is served

Arm-R-Seal is a urethane modified Tung oil. You get the beauty of Tung oil and the durability of Varithane. Plus it's a wipe on finish, so easy as pie.

So I pushed my motor a bit more than I intended. Long story short I have a transmission controller and now that I converted the car to an automatic (could not get a manual to survive) I have been playing with locking the torque converter (fluid coupler). At the quarter mile, worked like a dream. Feels like a shift to another gear...powerful and great for my elapsed times and trap speed. Well, I tried the same at the standing mile last year and I had a different result than I planned. Basically, I use overdrive in the standing mile and when I finally got the transmission to take OD (4th gear for me) by getting out of it and bumping it to neutral and back, it made crazy power and pulled like I've never felt her go. That was the good part. The bad part is it excited the turbos more than planned and she made more boost at the manifold than I expected. Result...I raised the heads. So if you haven't seen this before, imagine all they dynamic cylinder compression created by the piston stroke with the benefit of turbo compression flaming out the side of the head/block area. Basically...a blow torch. Managed to get the car safely to a stop and aside from a bit of fire suppressant to ensure the smoking under the hood was not fire, not too hard on the motor/car. But I did do this to the heads and I wanted to share so you could 1) see what it looks like if you haven't before and 2) see some craftsmanship the gent that made these for me does on heads. Basically three steps thus far: my trashing them, welding and rough machining, and then cleaning them nicely. Note on the last step the chambers have been "softened"...there's an edge within the chamber if you will. That's for quenching and better handling the heat from boost and avoiding pre-detonation. vroom vroom... HS

^ Here and ready for action Sir!

Pre-summer fruits!

Dessert is served!

About to: (Sous vided) Rack of pork

Did you know this album starts with Monday Morning?

Killer today too, most of the creaks/streams are dry, almost all the terrain on the west side of the valley is rideable again. Kids passed out early, BHSE and vodka is a winning combination for me. Low call tomorrow and the in-laws want the grand kids, so it looks like another hard day of dirtbking followed by music and drinking for me!

I hope those repairs last for you Your dedication to straight line speed is epic.

Long day of mountain single track, followed by BHSE and drinks.

Erbarme dich crushes my soul ever time I listen to it. Alto arias = underrated.

Looks awesome Grahame!

Unholy carp, dude!

And I could be the Pope of Greenwich Village ...

yes the amp is balanced. whether there is a opamp unbal to bal converter like the liquid carbon or lcx, is unknown. But there is no reason why the front end cannot be a differential amplifier and then its balanced. of course that depends on your definition of balanced, its not the same kind of balanced as a super symmetry dynalo. its a unbalanced/balanced to balanced converter and then 4 x cfa output amplifiers. Same as liquid gold, liquid carbon, lcx. I see the confusion from my post, the single ended output is going to be limited to something like 18vpp (30 volts - VGS(x2)-2) whereas the cth would be about 26v This amp is definitely to compete with the lyr3. whether they knew that the lyr3 was coming or not. Both amps have serious limitations and issues. also that picture is the cavalli version the monoprice version will probably be different just like the differences in the original cth and the production version

Conditions were pretty epic today. Rained most of yesterday. Plus all am until 9 then the sun came out. I went out at 1 pm, dirt was perfect and mid 50s plus a very strong wind meant that after warm up I hit the slow technical stuff for 3 hours and hardly went through my water! Late October through April is my favorite time of the year in the Sierras. BHSE always delivers when I get home, thanks Spritzer. Plan is the same for tomorrow.

Here's the HV version set to 450v. Have to test this one still.

Partsconnexion replaced the pot with one they apparently hand selected. I supplied my data and graph above to them, and did let them know I had soldered it in. I returned it. The replacement arrived today so ran numbers on it in the same manner as before. It looks much better:

Mini and micro versions of the gr78xx supplies...

Nothing to stop you driving from Class A. Lowest distortion configuration because no crossover non-linearities. I had a Krell KSA100mk2 for many years, which sounded great, gave a hernia to lift it, and it blew up twice to the extent that flames were imminent. It burned clean through the board at one stage when 2nd breakdown killed the power transistors, which killed the drivers and the emitter loads for the drivers burnt through the board. Great fun, but I tend to like non-exciting technologies now; um like the STM-T2 clone

I heard an Abyss off both the GSX Mk II and Ragnarok with a Yggdrasil DAC. Properly adjusted, the Abyss was very good. SR-009 good, NOPE. Perhaps if the SR-009 was run off a Stax amp (T2 excluded). Not when the SR-009 was driven by a BHSE or KGSSHV.