Leaderboard

I’m not sure if my setup can do thread milling, not sure if it’s a controller or spindle limitation. Rough draft finished. Time to get some thicker cheap wood for a full mock up.

Man, did I sleep like a baby last night. I slept IN as well, which felt wonderful. I woke up to NPR playing Garth Brooks, which was kind of weird. He doesn't strike me as public radio's normal fare. All day everyone has seemed to be in a good mood, and I can't figure out why. It's like the whole nation got a good night's sleep as well. Funny thing, that.

Catspaw – Matthew Sweet

All this CNCing got me excited, so I figured I’d share... Here’s my mill and this is a heat sink that I am thread milling. Very cool stuff IMG_2788.MOV Also, I’ve been using painters tape and super glue instead of fixtures. Works great on metal. So much easier.

This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end I'll never look into your eyes again Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in need of some stranger's hand In a desperate land? I love the guitar intro.... in "Apocalipsis Now" It is a work of art

You're getting older, and that's a bummer. But we still love you Michael Grummer! Have the best Birthday ever!

Thanks guys! Dunhill seems much more comfortable after the initial pain shot and antibiotic, which is very good, as he had been obviously miserable.

Decided to try to build a hand plane holder and “over” practice making pocket holes.

Not until I can get sheet goods with legs.

That is pretty fucking impressive. As I do not have one of these nerd drills like everyone else, my projects are sloppier and much less impressive. That is pretty fucking impressive. As I do not have one of these nerd drills like everyone else, my projects are sloppier and much less impressive.

Changed out my ZU DL-103 for the Benz Micro Ace SL that arrived today. Got the new cartridge aligned, tracking force set to 1.7g and VTA at 20 degrees. Yeah, definitely an upgrade! Wow, really liking this cartridge! Flat and neutral? No. Fun and engaging? Hell yes!

Here’s an example of me milling some small brackets without having to worry about the outer contours

Just chillin' to this...

I didn't even know the album was coming until I randomly saw it on the front page of AllMusic. A happy surprise to start 2021!

Shush you, what happens in ... stays in...

Thank you, grawk, for your kind reply. This makes "my world" right and perfect again 🙂 Because today, I was a bit shocked about the rude reactions and posts without answers but only playing jokes on me although I did not have had anything bad in mind. I am a novice with too little knowledge on this forum. However, I had read already many articles and posts on headphones, amplifiers, Stax and other audio stuff at head-case before, so I thought it was a forum like head-fi. So, it was only a misunderstanding by me. I also always enjoyed the interesting posts and verdicts of Birgir (spritzer), as he knows so much on the amp electronics and digs deep into the technology (e.g. taking apart even the headphone drivers for quality inspection), So due to all this, I really thought I could get some advice on headphones here at head-case. In the meantime, I found your welcome post where it is written what head-case is about and that the idea behind it is quite different to standard forums. And I also read that one should first look around and not start to post right in the beginning. So, that was my fault, I just did not know about the idea behind the head-case community. But your kind last post repaired my confidence to this community, which first seemed to be damaged when my thread suddenly was blocked and closed. All my remarks were meant to be interpreted with a "grain of salt", i.e. with the same fun and irony (with 😉 ) as it came from the others, too. And as is written in your haed-case rules/welcome letter: "[...] We are sometimes quite rude, often irreverant, and regularly abusive. [...]" i.e. understanding humor 🙂

I'm just here for the nude photos.

Looks like Brent now sings with the Scary Pockets

Good grief - you're both going through the dental wars. Hope you both get through it just fine, and your wallet recovers. That is if they don't get you both confused and give you a cat's tooth implant and fit Dunhill with human dentures....

There is a good point of view to have in life, never buy anything from Hifiman!

That’s very impressive! Thread milling is more about the rigidity of the mill. At that size I’m not sure how well it would work, but it might be worth a try. I run my spindle at 12k rpm. Other than that it’s just a program/speeds/feed.

I almost feeling like I’m cheating at this point. Drawing some obscure shape, loading some wood, hitting run, and poof! Magic.

Yes. I got these two thread mills: #4-40 #6-32 and #8-32 Took a bit of work to get the bit setup correctly in Fusion360, but works great now. When you're ready to try them, I can help you out.

Test run on what will be a Stetson and sword holder. Figured 36” would be large enough, I guess not.

when the flaming lips were actually good sounds killer on headphones.

IMG_0592.MOV

Sleeping Jax. Hard to believe he’s 10 now!

When I heard these were being released I just had to get a set to see if they matched the supreme crap that the original was. Now after some delays I picked the set up from the postoffice. This first post will focus mostly on the amp, the headphones will be taken apart at a later date. I have been listening to them for a few hours now so some quick impressions are in order though. Same build quality as we've come to expect from Hifiman...i.e. absolute fucking trash. First off, the phones stink badly. These are 1500$ on their own so much like the Shangri-La JR... everything is nasty synthetic crap. Same cable as the Shangri-La and Jr. use which is completely unsuitable for this role. Comfort is ok, I have the headband at max extension and the headpad is a bit uncomfortable due to that. It's odd though as they are feather light. As for the sound, well first thing you'll notice is the utter lack of usable deep bass output. I think there might be a port hiding somewhere in there as they don't squeal as they should. Tonally they are ok though, a bit thin, non offensive and the soundstage is decent. Similar league as the L300 but the bass issue has to be fixed for them to be directly compared. This is off my usual setup (Denafrips Terminator, Carbon CC) and not the included amp. Nothing from China is turned on here without being taken apart... Now for the amp, this is probably the worst chassis design ever and pretty much an utter pain to get into. Now to do so, you have to take off the front and remove the two screws which hold this PCB: Then remove the nut which holds the attenuator (more on that later) and finally remove the screws for the back panel: Undo everything there as well and the power switch and input wires are on connectors. I just cut the IEC off though as the input wires for the switch are nowhere close to safe and so is the earthing in this thing. Just look at how thin that stuff is. Also, why the hell didn't they use push on connectors for the IEC? It would make it much simpler... Once all that stuff is off you can pull out the pcb's and disconnect the transformer: Doing that I saw this gem... the bare wires from the transformer are ziptied to the input lead. Yup...no need to separate that... You can also see the earthing tag there. At this point I'm not sure where the earth is actually connected to the chassis. Two wires connect with a screw to the top PCB at the back, one from the IEC and one from the transformer shield. Granted this goes through some standoffs and to the chassis eventually but that is now how earthing should be done. On the other side of the board there is an earth wire that goes directly to the pot, which is mounted on the chassis but that is also not proper earthing. This is all very China "we don't give a fuck about safety". Now here is the top board as it comes out of the chassis: Clearly the PSU and easy to read the output voltages on the bottom. Fixed regulators for the low voltage stuff (proper JRC parts so that's nice) and simple HV supply. Now anybody familiar with old Stax amps will notice what the amp actually is at this point. Funny to see the mix of crap caps, the input caps for the LV supplies are Lelon (crap) but the output are Nichicon. Same goes for the HV side, input are "JH" (never heard of it) but the output are Nippon Chemicon. Just odd but I'll go more in depth on the PSU when I rip out all the crap caps. Here is the back of the PSU: Now the amplifier, with just three voltage rails, +/-15V and +660V there is just one possible topology here. Resistor current source feeding a single output device. So here we go: Yup this is utter shit and a clone of what Stax did with the SRA-10/12S back in 1972. It gets worse though... Say hello to the mosfet output devices and well...their typical output capacitance of 65pf. That's half the capacitance of the phones and you have two of these per driver. Yup...pure quality here. The 2SC4686A we used in the KGSSHV have a Cob of about 2.4pf and the goal here is to keep it as low as possible otherwise it will mess up the sound signature of the amp. Think Cavalli Liquid Lightning here... Here is the input section and the we need to discuss that a bit. So this amp has a balanced input but it isn't balanced. The volume control is one of those cheapo 21 step steppers you can find on ebay for 15$ and just two decks. There are also just two wires coming from the input board per channel, Rin and ground... Funny too is that the instructions manual specifically states that the volume control is a 21 step relay based attenuator. Yeah...that is a fucking lie. So the amp is resistor loaded mosfet with output capacitance matching the load and isn't actually balanced. The output caps are at least larger what what Stax used back in the day so that is something... Now we need to discuss this board: This is on front panel and for some reason the outputs have relays on them and 1K output resistors. While better than nothing, something in the 5K range would be a better choice. Now comes the point some were waiting for, can this thing be used with Stax sets? At this point I'd say no, there are just 2M ballast resistors on that board for each output (no idea why they used two) so this amp can damage Stax. Ohhh and one funny thing before I go do something productive...they hand matched the output load resistors... Finally just a dump of the extra pics I took if anybody wants to look through them.

Dunhill gave a loud shriek and tried to bite me, Saturday night, when I petted his jaw. He has never acted violently towards me at any time for even when he has been sick or injured, in the past. I assume he has been in pain for a while, and it just wasn’t obvious to hairless apes, and he just couldn’t take chin scratches anymore (I pay a lot of attention to their behavior, which has caught some things before they got bad; not this time). I unfortunately wasn’t able to get him into the vet until today (and I called around, believe you me). He requires substantial surgery for resorptive lesions. I knew he had some dental issues, but he never presented pain like that until he did, and the vet we had been seeing had been checking his mouth regularly, and never thought it needed anything other than special food and being watched. The dental specialist he saw today thinks that Dunnie had some significant trauma long before I got him, and it finally burst out. That is apparently a common thing with cats his age. It’s not a cheap procedure, and he is scheduled, and will be getting kitty Percocet shots every few days until then. Funny enough, I have my own oral surgery (extraction, abscess ablation, and bone graft, due to a root that finally failed around a crown from an accident that happened ten years ago, with implant and crown after I heal in 6 months) scheduled for Monday. Dunhill is going in the Monday after (quickest I could schedule him). I’m lucky I can afford both: if I couldn’t, Dunhill would be getting his and I would just have to wait. It would have been nice if he could have waited a few weeks; if he wants grafts and implants he’s gonna have to pay for them himself, though.

Well I was finally fed up with the shit cable so out came the tools... One funny thing, I just read through the manual and it specifically states that these have a gold plated plug...which they don't have in reality. Why state something which ever owner will easily spot as a lie? Similar earpads to the Shangri-La Jr. The protective mesh is just a black PCB and the other side even has some production markings on the silkscreen. First reveal and yup...these are 100% pcb. Just stacked up in the baffle and no glue at all. Now comes a pile of pics: It's an interesting design but from a build quality point of view, this is miles away from what Stax are doing. One other thing, the headphones are wired up backwards, + output is wired to the back stator. The back grills just drop out and are not fastened in any way. Time for a new cable. The wide PC-OCC Stax cable is a tight fit but it does work. All done.