tkam

Yeah the emm labs and zanden is still a crap load of money, more money then I'd ever throw at headphones.

I like the new classic, metal casing and 160gigs is not a bad deal for $350. The nano is kinda nice I guess but I'm not interested in that little storage space. The touch is an utter joke.

Actually at the end of their production pretty much everyone including TTVJ had them going for $900-$1000. It was a few years before that he had them on sale for around $400. Man I wish I had bought 10 or 20 pairs back then.

Congrats Dan I hope it sounds great

Check out his "In Search of Sunrise" series and his new one Elements of Life.

He only put fans in the very early ones w/ the older toaster style chassis.

HP Photosmart C6180 Hitachi Travelstar 7K200

Well really what would they say? It's not like they'd admit to the lower standards or the fact that they haven't cleaned their molds in about 3 decades.

Hell at this price I'm tempted to get one for pre-amp duties mainly. It also happens to be the best solid state headphone amp I've ever heard.

Get both

Thats a hell of a deal.

Just wait till you get the 6bl7 or 6bx7's for outputs

I think he has 4 or 5 now

I really liked the old Paradigm Active speakers.

Depends on the sound your looking for, the bx7's are a more neutral sounding tube.

Here's the intial thread I started regarding the amp: http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,1144.0.html I hadn't come up with The Dragon name by that point.

It's a pretty long story into how the amp came about so I'll give the short version. I wanted a top-flight headphone/pre-amp that would also have the ability to drive speakers at some point in the future. So the original plan was to build an amp geared toward using the 6528's as they are very netural sounding tubes and would have plenty of power to drive efficient speakers. The final design ended with an amp that has two gain stages the 1st stage is a single tube and the 2nd stage is two tubes. The 2nd stage can be turned on and off and is really only useful w/ the k1000 and speakers. I still do need to get binding posts added at some point.

Yeah I really like the SP amps with the higher output tubes, mine especially of course . I really do need to get some binding posts put on my amp one of these days. FYI at the meet my amp was running 1x 7062 -> 2x 6bx7 -> 2x - Bendix 7802 (w/ the 2nd gain stage the bx7's disabled). Speaking of Bendix 6080's one of Earl's died during the meet

I've tried the K81DJ and found them to be pretty uncomfortable for my ears. The Senn hd280 I should probably add to my list it's been a very long time since I've heard those. They would probably isolate better than my other possibilities.

It's more than a "might be" . The Raptor has a higher output impedance than the impedance of the L3000 there is no way it is driving them even close to their full potential.

I agree with Dusty and Elephas the R10's just aren't bass monsters and IMO aren't particularly good at all with rock music. They may be very good with Vocals and Jazz but I really don't like headphones that are genre-specific hence why I no longer own the RS-1.

I think this is actually a pretty good point and I share a similar opinion. Personally I think the Extreme makes pretty much all the 6sn7/5687 output SP amps completely obsolete. Those using 6bl7/6bx7's are much better off but even those still quite aren't up on the level as the Extreme and other amps using the 6as7/6080/6528/etc.

Yep and honestly he could free up a good bit of the time he spends answering questions by having a useful and informative website.

Thats the way it goes unfortunately custom stuff just takes ages. I really think any custom work he should automatically quote a 1 yr delivery date. Sure he might lose some orders because of that but at least the buyer would have a better idea of what they are getting into.

It's Mikhail he always has a ton of things in the works, though most of them don't see the light of day or take years to