Leaderboard

Cheers all. Pretty normal day -- driving kids around, feeling hella creaky. The Beard took me out for lunch and some advice on aging disgracefully. I'll try to live up to his high standards. Now if you'll excuse me, this cab ain't gonna gargle itself!

This wins for best listening chair. "John Holliday Perry started diving at a time that he called a few years B.C., Before Cousteau developed the aqualung. He built most of the submarines for the James Bond movie Thunderball, and kept a few for his own use on a private island in the Bahamas. At right is his shark hunter which he used to access a private underwater habitat in 1990. The house was about 30 ft down, and entered through an opening on the floor. He liked to spend time down there listening to Brahms, Beethoven, and Belafonte, while watching the fish swim by. RIP John, an American original."

Satan's handiwork.

Bad Merlot, a giant chocolate chip cookie and...

One of the tweakier things I've done. My twin brother is back in the states for a month and brought a couple of pairs of KZ ZS-6s with him that he has had for awhile. He had previously talked me into buying a pair of KZ ZS-10s, but I found them unlistenable due to their excessive high end. A few months ago, I had run across a post on diyhifi from Thorsten Loech (aka, Kuei Yang Wang) regarding some mods he had done to these. These are apparently a clone (looks-wise) of Campfire Audio Andromedas, which he apparently liked. Patrick (EUVL) on diyaudio also did this and seemed to like them, so WTF. Like I need something else to do right now. I sent a link to this to my brother, and hence, here I am trying to solder shit much smaller than I am comfortable with So after some fun, I got both pairs of them done, and surprise, they are actually quite listenable for me! I really kind of like them, but still need to tame the high end a bit. At least my brother told me if I did this, I could have one pair of them. Listening to some Catherine Wheel Chrome right now (still one of my favs... those guys were fucking good!). Stock, they are like this: After removing a miniscule cap and resistor (102? barely the size of the end of my tweezers), and rewiring the balanced armature (BA) tweeters from parallel to serial, and replacing the resistor with a 7.5ohm MELF and the cap with a reasonably sized Panasonic ECP-U, they look like this: Sorry for the fuzzy iPhoneXR pics, but best I could do this time of night...

Millions of them too.

For anyone building a blue hawaii, here are the current draws for my build after 5 minutes of power on, rounded up to the nearest mA. These figures provide no margin for variation, to headroom for inrush on power up and should not be considered minimum specs for the transformer... PSU board set to 400V output (actual around 404V) constant current on the amp boards set to 20mA per valve inputs shorted to ground no headphones attached groove tubes el34 kemet long life 470uF caps @ 550V for B+ and B- Boards used: amp Blue Hawaii kgbhver6sbipolarinc PSU kgsshvpssicfetdual2new (single board version 1.6 with no delayed start cpc1117n that appeared in ver 1.7)total for both channels: -15VDC line draws 10mA +15VDC line draws 11mA +400VDC line draws 81mA -400VDC line draws 128mA EACH 6.3VAC line draws 3.1A Primary side current draw 0.67A @230VAC All Measurements made on a Brymen bm869s multimeter. NOTE With @230V primary the inrush current is significant and will blow a 3A fast blow fuse on power up, and blow a 4A fast blow after half a dozen power ups (tested with no B+- delay circuit). With a delay circuit 3.15A Timed fuse looks good. transformer I used (which is overkill, but as a result the transformer generates very little heat. ) 330VAC 300mA 330Vac 300mA 36V AC centre tapped 200mA 18v-0-18v 6.3VAC 4.5A 6.3VAC 4.5A Now I have measurements I would say that the transformer could be scaled down to somthing like 330V 250mA 330V 150mA +18V centre tap -18V 50mA 2x 6.3V 4.5A I hope this post will help someone. regards James

I wasted 3 minutes of my life with that vid...LOL. Tesla...what??? HS

Can I pay an extra $5 to get Neil Young to stop talking about compression?

Al Di Meola - Pursuit Of Radical Rhapsody

Amazon Launches Amazon Music HD https://www.amazon.com/music/unlimited/hd Ooh , more bits ... For less .. https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20869526/amazon-music-hd-lossless-flac-tier-spotify-apple Oh, Hi Neil, Pono? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/business/amazon-music-hd.html Earth will never be the same again, apparently. https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-music-hd-launches-to-compete-with-tidal/ https://variety.com/2019/music/news/amazon-music-unveils-hd-highest-quality-audio-streaming-1203338552/ 90 day free trial. Nice.

I use a pair of Optivisors with the strongest (10x ?) lenses. If I did much of this stuff I'd be getting a microscope...

It's from "Spaceballs". Elon likes some whimsy to go along with his accounting fraud financial and technical innovation.

Happy Birthday Mate!

I will happily pay an extra $5 to not support Amazon. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-services-pay-2019/

Happy Birthday, Andrew. Half-Century, not out? Cheers to 50 Years. Birthday gift idea? Socks! One more thing ... Happy Birthday!

It's the big 5-0! Live long and prosper, my tall friend! Cheers!

Giving the new Pixies a go. EDIT: It is not bad! I was pleasantly surprised.

That guy was a total asshole... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That cat was listed as a "difficult" cat, when I got her. She isn't the nicest cat in the world, but I think she is pretty pleasant. I wake up most mornings with her on my pillow, chirping in my face. My first SPCA volunteer day had me holding and cleaning up after a pair of 9 week-old kittens. That was a good Saturday afternoon.

so much love for that post

I pass out in the papasan chair. Gene has the classic Poang Passout