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In honor of the Pike’s Peak hill climb this weekend.

Had chicken mole in Park City. After a 45-minute wait for my dish to arrive, I was disturbed to realize that I may have lost my sense of taste as the meal was devoid of any flavors. I was certain I had contracted Covid on the plane ride to Youtah. Thankfully when I took a sip of my warm Margarita, I had the overwhelming flavor of radiator fluid and Yak musk. Don't ask how I know these flavors and aromas; I had a very interesting childhood...

This post made while doing my radio show, because lol.

Talk about a pair of brass ones.... Woof. Spectacular point of view...thanks for posting, TMoney! HS

Applied for (expedited) Passports At the first "local" appointment we could find. Where an old school post office employee handled our application and thanked us for doing our homework and having all the necessary paperwork / documents to hand. Had them take the photos so there would be no doubt on the acceptability. Interesting that they have to explicitly state https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-apply/photos.html That selfies and social media filters are not acceptable for passport photos. Now comes the wait.

I watched a documentary on 80s Group B rally and I can’t believe the danger those folks took on. Unbelievably fast cars on unbelievably scary rally stages. The drivers were insane, but are now true legends of motor sport. https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.f6b8f0f1-0a56-6b59-8bfc-a282e978f596&territory=US&ref_=share_ios_movie&r=web The Pike’s road is paved these days but the runs up it are still legendary. The climb streams Sunday morning on the Mobile 1 YouTube and Facebook pages.

Just listening to Tim {Henson} play some tune with friends

Chicken Mole Enchiladas And Fish (Tacos) 'N' "Chips" At https://www.elmolinocentral.com/ Very Tasty!

jh13s

It started with repairing a badly damaged shangri la jr driver 2 years ago, I almost rebuilt the set from the diaphragm to the stators，and of course the dust cover😦 The first thing I discovered is that the 'nano-technology' used by hifiman actually comes from the covering used by indoors aircraft model enthusiasts，the name is OS film and it is still available on ebay or https://www.indoorffsupply.com/shop/os-film-25ft-roll-1 the driver of the hifiman estats is completely glued which is similar to the early stax lambdas, but hifiman glue is significantly worse...after opening the driver i found that they only use OS film for their dust cover, the diaphragm is another PET film ~ a little bit thicker but with much better strength. In order to repair the diaphragm, I found a seller on Alibaba who can provide samples of Toray PET film with thickness below 2 microns at an acceptable price，and use the inner tire stretcher to stretch the film like any other diy estats ，Then test it with a 10" subwoofer and minidsp umik-1 to find proper F0. conductive coating is another serious problem，I've tried quite a few methods including antistatic agents like licron crystal, ANTISTATIK100，floor cleaner，carbon-based coatings such as graphene, and alcohol-soluble nylon, even tried nano-silver wire solution and metal evaporation...Some of them are sensitive to humidity, some arcs，some are ridiculously expensive, some have uneven surface resistance distribution, and some are sensitive to temperature changes. Yah~ finding the proper conductive coating is the most difficult part especially for a layman. unexpectedly, I tried to search for hifiman patents, hoping to find something useful... here's a patent showing that they used some kind of metal oxide nano particles as conductive coating for their estats. emmm，very interesting...🙄 By consulting with chemistry professionals, I decided to try a solution called ATO (antimony doped tin oxide), there are many antistatic agents I have used before have ATO ingredients though. I got some ATO alcohol solution at concentration around 10~15%, it works really well, and coating appearance is somewhat identical to hifiman diaphragm! The last thing is to repair stators. hifimans probably use #150~300 brass mesh and solder their edges to a 2mm thick aluminum base plate PCB board, then glue the rest of middle part. I've tried tensioning those brass mesh with embroidery frame and manual screen stretcher，but it is not tight enough to stretche brass mesh in this way, the mesh itself is too strong to tighten it up... then I found some brass sieves with different meshes on taobao and these machined copper screens are perfect for making DIY mesh stators... after everything's ready，i desoldered OG brass mesh, cleaned the copper foil, applied low temperature solder paste, and carefully soldered the new brass mesh with a heat gun. During the process of repairing shangri la jr, I started planning to make some bigger mesh stator estats... of course，the target is its big brother shangri la SR😈I received a set of the first batch of shangri la sr made in 2016，here is the headphone inside，yap~inherited the tradition of hifiman with such horrible workmanship...😱 however，SR sounds not as technical as the X9000 though，but with more pleasant and passion. SR uses 3mm thick aluminum base plate PCB instead of 2mm on JR version，2 black things in the middle are to prevent the diaphragm from attaching stators，The D-S gap is around 0.7~0.8mm(thickness of glue included) which is identical to JR version，active area is close to 6400mm² ，that is pretty large diaphragm size for a commercial product though，but less 5300mm² of area on stator allows air to pass through. I tried to use the 3mm FR4 board as mesh holder at first time，however，mesh stator disassembly is not an easy job...therefore，I changed to use 1.5mm brass plates as the mesh holder and glued the copper mesh to it , brass mesh is also replaced with higher # red copper mesh for more convenient adhension. I spent most of time adjusting the tension of the diaphragm and finally found the tension needed for F0 similar to OG SR ,the clone driver has a slightly enlarged diaphragm(6839mm²) ，0.73mm fr-4 pcb spacer， and everything is screwed to the housing cover. The frequency response of clone and SR are generally similar，but the sensitivity difference between the two is about 1.5dB actually，SR is more diffused...clone one sounds a bit more clearer. SR has obvious recession between 1-2kHz，it may be caused by a sealing problem in the space between the driver and the earcup.... It's unlikely to be solved without EQ, but it doesn't sound as bad as it looks from the graphics. one more thing... Every shangri la must have a throne , so I made one for my mutation🤣

"Just" the Twin Eagles pellet grill, no gas.

Last night's show is up:

A Saturday morning listen to block out recent SCOTUS decisions, Ye Vagabonds Nine Waves ex.

Look at Mr Moneybags with his "premium" version, Rather than the plebian ad supported tier . Maybe they should collaborate with BMW on the "delete badge" option.

Idler hands are the devil's work.

I'm still don't regret selling off my high end rigs after getting the JH13s all these years later.

Good call also. Not even completely snarky in this instance. 😁

Had the day off so went on a little adventure in the fire-scarred forests of Brookdale & Boulder Creek, CA - a spontaneous house hunt. Mad photoshop skillz there realtor. Like those photos plus general aging and a tornado or two. Did have a nice omelet in Boulder, hung out with two donkeys, and tried on some glasses.

sushi supper

Thanks to the great work from @Mirko and advice from @kevin gilmore we just finished retrofitting the GS-X MK2's power supply with a custom made GRLV. I haven't had the time to really sit down and listen to it but first impressions that the amp is quite a bit smoother and more detailed now. 😃

It is likely that the #80 mesh is not easy to make a stator by hand, which leads to the failure of the omega driver, and the driver housing made by resin at that time was not as strong as later 007 009 though. There are some DIY estats such as Perun and Phenomenon in Russia, they use much lower number size copper mesh as stator. I have owned a pair of perun, the stators are made of about #10 copper mesh, the mesh itself is very strong actually, and is glued to the PCB holder with structural adhesive. As for the glass stator of the HE90, the glass is indeed rigid, However, as a stator, it does not play the role in the Sennheiser advertisement at all. The only thing I can expect is that the glass is chemically stable and not easy to be corroded or oxidized, and Manufacturing microporous glass plate is extremely expensive which also leads to the insane price of the HE90... Unfortunately, Sennheiser is now not planning to stop, they use even more expensive ceramic based PCB stator on HE1.😦

In that case I guess we received "expedited" service. New French doors and hardware are still a 4-6 month wait.

Our deck furniture has been over a year wait, but is supposedly going to be here in July.

After three months of waiting the table and chairs arrive...except the table is the wrong size. At least the Rose was excellent.