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Tool - Fear Inoculum decided i wouldn't listen until i had the physical copy in hand. already waited so many years, a number of days wasn't an issue.

Depending on how small is small. You can consider Kevin's current feedback design which is the smallest desktop electrostatic amp I have built to date. All parts are current, simplistic power supply and very good sounding to my ears. Even though money saving isn't the main reason for me to go the DIY route, this current feedback amp is also the cheapest to build. The amp board (per channel) measured 184mm x 64mm. There is a thread in the DIY forum dedicated to this amp.

My local transfer station (we called it a dump in my day) has a new "swap shop." Last night I carefully packed up a humidifier my father bought in the 1990s (I still had the original box) as well as my ca. 2013 3 PCI slot 275W TDP video card, and a Drobo I bought from ...one of you Head-Casers. I managed to get my ca. 1996 LaserJet IV+ working with my current MacBook Pro (it's got a network card, so it's just an IP and some Gutenprint.) After years of buying one shit-tastic inkjet printer after another, I love my dorm-fridge-sized-black-and-white-only-it-works-every-fucking-time-without-fail laser printer. New ink is like $150, but it lasts half a decade. Real printers make your lights dim when they power on. I used said LJ4+ to print out descriptions and basic instructions for the Drobo and the video card, because I knew no one at the dump would have a blinkered clue WTF they were. The attendant was quite pleased because he didn't know a GPU from an IED. Given how well the whole exchange went, I'm going to be divesting myself a lot of more things like it in the next few weeks. I did consider putting the Drobo and GPU on Craigslist or sodding Facebook marketplace, but given the horror stories I've heard I'd rather just be rid of them than try to extract $50 out of them at the cost of (what's left of) my sanity. Related: Anyone need FOUR Yamaha NS-1000s speakers? Late 80s vintage, they have a midrange driver that sells for like $250 bare.

For those that have not been and if you have 26 minutes... Laphroaig Distillery Tour

Mediterranean Salad Lamb shashlik

I always use EQ. With a well implemented EQ there's very little reason not to. The degradation in sound quality is minimal, and the improvement from having a more linear FR is very noticeable. For instance, I always hear a resonance around 7.5khz in full-size over-ear headphones (probably some outer ear resonance, it isn't there in measurements) and EQ lets me minimize it, making things much smoother. There are obviously limits to what EQ can correct, and it's not going to turn a turd into something listenable, but it can definitely take an already good headphone to the next level for very little cost. I'm still learning how to use it properly, but using a sine sweep or a test tone generator with a frequency slider to hear where the peaks and dips are, and then correcting based off of that has worked pretty well so far.

Sepultura "The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must Be the Heart"

Vindaloo and Roti

I also have a BSc and MSc in computer science, but for the last few years I have been lecturing Cisco networking and computer network security rather than programming. If you have the time and the space, DIY is a lot cheaper than buying... My total cost for the blue hawaii build as less than 1/4 of the price I could buy one for new. Even second hand I probably could not afford to buy one. (OK the case will not look as nice and I did not go for a crazily expensive volume pot, but I could add one later). Apart from the satisfaction when its built and working, I know that in the future I can upgrade/modify/repair/service the amp. The blue hawaii is only my second high voltage DIY hifi build. (before this I built the hi-amp alpha centauri and have built a DC electronic load and a few other low voltage DIY projects). I didn’t hate electronics but I don’t "get it" the same way I "get" programming.: I can write programs from scratch in my head... I can't design more than a simple circuit full stop... although I am getting better at understanding and reverse engineering other people’s circuits and modifying them a little bit... The alpha build was tough, there where errors in the pcb, silk screen, component list, I killed a transistor adjusting the psu, the psu specs were marginal, as was the temperatures on the DC valve heater transistors. I think so few people built it that the information did not get debugged. It took some problem solving to get it working but it was a learning experience. In contrast the blue hawaii has been almost plain sailing. Enough people have built them that any errors seem to have been ironed out. The psu worked first time as did the right channel. The left channel hand one issue which I spotted with my magnified visor: a almost solder bridge which would arc at about 65V. Trivial to fix and the amp now works fine. My biggest issue with the Kevin Gilmore designs was getting my head around all the terminology used in the filename of the gerber files used for the PCB creation. I sent a few private messages to Kevin Gilmore and he was very helpful and responsive. To sum up I’m so glad I decided to go DIY, I have learnt a lot and the satisfaction outweighs the frustration when things go wrong.... (just dont ask me to confirm this when im in the middle of something being wrong ) regards and sorry for my rambling James

Just ordered London/Wales and The Americans on Amazon. RIP.

And another biggie, Robert Frank is dead at 94. “He believed that photojournalism oversimplified the world, mimicking, as he put it, ‘those goddamned stories with a beginning and an end.’”

sad - so many bottles - never to be opened. unless they were in the HC or PLOWED groups. "as I reach for a pour of the mortlach 1936/50yo - and shake my head"

RIP Peter Lindbergh https://time.com/5668300/peter-lindbergh-death/ "This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection."

Finally cased my ES CFA amp. Returned the bias resistors to 1M with the larger heatsinks. Running 20mA bias for the output sections.

I think mine is already finished but I need to touch up something. My pocket CFA.

Chassis just arrived. Looking good.

Another electrostat CFA lives. This one born on the 4th of July? The PCB is congo5's layout. The amps is powered by my GRHV PSU with ~405VDC rails. Many thanks to Kevin for another wonderful design, to congo5 for the PCB boards and many advices along the way and to sorenb for his generosity of coming to my rescue and providing the missing, unobtanium sands. This build would not have been possible otherwise. I did not match any of the transistors - barely had enough for this one build. The output balance of the two channels sit at 6.6VDC and 4.4VDC after one hour running. The offset is 10.7/4.2VDC and 9.7/5.3VDC. For both channels, the non-inverted output offset is the higher one. The heatsinks are at a toasty 52C after one hour running, about 28C rise from the cold start. Will need to find a chassis with larger heatsinks.

if you don't mind a warm case, this seems to be enough heat sink 3.5" x 9" + case bottom after one hour its 40 degrees rise from ambient 70/110

R.I.P. Eddie Money...