Leaderboard

After around 7 years away from DIY, I got back into it a few weeks ago and finished this KGST. It’s been nice reconnecting with the bench. I still have a Carbon and a BH waiting to be finished (PCBs are populated, just need to design proper enclosures). Hopefully it won’t take me another 7 years this time...

Picked up another classic Kona.

Nice Obit on Tom L in el reg Including this gem "He remained active and engaged even later in his life. Rapper Tauheed K. Epps, who records as "2 Chainz", sampled Lehrer's song The Old Dope Peddler [PDF] for his track Dope Peddler, asking permission to use a snippet. Lehrer wrote back: As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2? " https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/tom_lehrer_dead_at_97/

I wasn't sure where to put this either but this should be rare enough, the Sony ECR-800 energizer or the ECA-80 to be precise. Now there is a bit of a backstory to this one, I've never found a ECR-800 but I found this one for a song in China so I had to snap it up. It was in a bad way when it arrived, damage all over and the back sockets all a bit crooked but the worst was inside. See, Sony in their infinite wisdom, used a mercury switch for the input switching and that had broken in shipping. There was mercury all over the inside so I had to clean everything and dispose of it properly. It's a shame as its a very early unit with the custom Sony sockets, they later moved onto using Stax 6 pin sockets with these. I let it sit for probably a year before I decided what to do with it as so a full rebuild was in order. These are 100V only so for my use I need a new transformer, I fitted an IEC on the back, new binding posts with the switch function bypassed and all caps replaced. I also fitted a 6 pin Stax socket to the front as I don't have an ECR-800 and if I ever find one, odds are it will have that plug. Plus this works nicely with Stax normal bias sets. For the circuitry as it is a bit odd for 1978 or so. Most of the what's there is a protection circuit and output relay but the gray brick on the bottom is the bias supply, a DC/DC converter. It has clearly seen some use as there should be paint on there but it seems to work fine and there is clearly a ballast resistor in there too. It's also odd that the transformers have two sets of wires so each socket is fed from its own set of wires. See the 4 purple bias wires too, they are all common on the bias supply.

In an effort to try and finish up some of the gigantic pile of projects, here is a fully DC/DC powered KGSSHV. The unit is close to 10 years old but not really used at all as it ended up at Kevin's with some transformer trouble. A couple of years ago I made an effort to bring all those amps home so I stripped it down for transport and the transformer went in the trash to save on weight. Then I found those lovely 400V DC/DC bricks, added one for 600V bias (with a bit of a trim and filtering) and one for +/-15V, all driven off a 90W 24VDC Meanwell brick. I had to lower the output stage current a bit from stock and there is a tiny bit of coil whine coming from those HV supplies but it works well. The B+ supply is the hottest part in there at 60°C.

In an earlier era, I was a regularl reader of The Online Photographer. I haven't kept up with it in years, for a host of reasons ranging from lack of interest to not really gleaning much worthwhile info to entirely too many Amazon affiliate links. One of the entries on TOP from 15+ years ago was "No one cares how hard you worked." I took that one to heart. I've spent ages editing a photo only to earn a collective shrug. Conversely, I've had SOOC jpegs from years ago that get attention to this day. With that in mind... OnnnnOn two occasions recently I've had the hood on my 17-40mm misaligned and not realized it. It's not super noticeable in the viewfinder and I don't chimp (stare at the LCD like a monkey) much. The misaligned hood only shows up in super wide angle shots, say 17-20mm. On Saturday, I had that problem for the entire shoot and didn't noticed until I was done. I have had quite a job with the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush tools in Photoshop, painting out the upper left corner of dozens of photos. When that doesn't work, I have to crop. Sometimes, both are necessary. Also, as was the case last year, the lighting conditions were harsh and difficult. I'd already edited 30 or so photos in Photoshop before I decided I was unhappy with the results and ran them through Luminar 4. Let's talk about Luminar for a moment. I pirated it 5 or so years ago. I liked it enough that I bought it. It does a lot with pseudo HDR math, similarly to what smartphone cameras do. The advantage Luminar offers is that it has sufficiently deep granularity in its controls that it's possible to reel in the more cartoonish aspects of HDR. With careful tweaking, Luminar allows for improvement of the dynamic range of images without looking like Photomatix vomit ca. 2006 or Facebook family vacation photos. L4 is no longer updated and in its final state is a quirky and buggy app. I have to make a copy of every photo I feed it because if I use the original, L4 will delete it. I learned this hard way and had to do serious work to replace all the originals Luminar deleted when I discovered this "feature." The app dev Skylum is now pushing the successor, Luminar Neo. They want it to be rentware like an Adobe product, but they don't have ADBE's clout. There is a lifetime license. I bought it on sale months ago for like $120. I am ...underwhelmed. Some of the UI is better than L4, but Neo is enough different that my workflow is much slower in it. Also, said UI is basically a new coat of paint on the same old engine. I find this displeasing. So far I have edited 102 photos (ya rly) including in a number of cases several edits of the same image. If you're really impatient, they're on my Flickr page. It has been been uncharacteristically hot and humid here on the Vineyard, and I swear I can feel my brain swelling. I went over my work earlier and found I had uploaded dupes of at least four different photos. Then there's the issue of figuring out which photos to post here and arranging them. It's exactly like a DJ set in that regard. Anyway, here's a nice bright rear end to tide y'all over while I finish editing The truck. I'm talking about the TRUCK. Stop looking at me like that.

I like that riser for the power switch and the tubes visible through the front.

You must have been very, very tired...

Saw this in a local parking lot. The first thing that came into my mind was "at least it looks a little better".

One of the guys on the UK Vintage Radio forum posted: "A little story. In my teens I was a big Black Sabbath fan. I'd heard that Ozzy lived at Ranton, a village near Stafford not too far from where I live. Me and a mate got on our bikes and rode over there. In a field a guy who looked like Ozzy was riding around on a monkey bike that was popular at the time. It was Ozzy's brother and he asked if we wanted to meet Ozzy. Of course we did. So we went in and for half an hour I chatted to him as he lay on a settee plucking aimlessly at a guitar. I kinda interviewed him. After a while his wife (first wife not Sharon) came into the room and said, "We have to go to Billy's now". Obviously Bill Ward, the drummer in Black Sabbath. Ozzy sent us on our way with signed stickers. A day to remember."

More found fun....

The place looks strangely familiar. (Leica SL2 + Canon 135/3.5 LTM) There seem to be quite a bit of hate on this camera, which seems to be the same whenever Leica comes out with Anything - so well done to Sony to go full premium. Some are annoyed that it is still the "same old" lens - that's exactly what makes it appealing in my book, albeit also appalling at manual focus and it might break down one day. New lenses are coming by the bucketloads, but a lot seem to go overboard and look boring, sterile - coincidentally exactly the same phenomenon as some modern headphones. But yeah, paying full MSRP on any high-end compact (or any camera) is the definition of luxury. Apart from Fuji they loose so much value. I've once again bought an RX1RII for 1/3rd of the price (AF not great, otherwise similar rendering), fingers crossed it's a good one. But I still question the legitimacy of these things. Some of the interchangeable lens cameras are getting so good now, is it really worth saving that much with size and weight - if it is a case of whether they let it in to a big concert or other event, it might worth it. Will make photos every bit as good or better as the Pro photographer with his or her pro camera + 24-70/2.8 lens (around 35). But my fav lens system is still the Leica M-mount and I need to mount them on a big. heavy SL2 - I won't even start

Re-reading a chunk of Isaac Asimov's stuff - Foundation series, Robot yarns etc. The Foundation trilogy was published in 1951-3 and have really stood the test of time. I became curious how Asimov died. Turned out a too early 72. But in his early 60's he had a triple heart bypass (in 1983), and was given a blood transfusion tainted with AIDS - and that was what killed him in due course. Same thing happed to the tennis player Arthur Ashe aged 49 - again following heart bypass surgery in 1983.

A few words regarding filament supplies I’m using with 2A3 and 300B tubes. 9 VAC => unregulated 11 VDC => XL4015 DCtoDC step down converter... ... with trimmers for output voltage and current limiter. It’s easy to set voltage to correct voltage depending of tube and also to trim current to achieve a sort of soft start. So far it works ok.

No output transformer. There are output electrolytics to headphone. Schematically it looks something like this. Reason for three KSC2690A in CCS is to distribute the heat, so no heat sink needed. At the moment I only use two transistors in CCS due to insufficient transformers. I don’t know how to optimize the circuit, but I’m happy with the result.

FInally got around to casing my DynaFET. I ordered the case from Modushop in November of 2021. I will probably clean up the wiring, particularly the output wiring. Also need to bolt the transformer down. I wish I would have done the lettering a bit smaller, but overall satisfied with how it turned out, and it sounds great, even though it is single-ended.

Read this a few months back, but as Beinart is making the rounds.