kevin gilmore

At low volume levels it will be hard to notice. But as the volume increases the frequency response will change

That is definitely one way to tune it

no of course the effort is not worth it. But we will do it anyway. I have schematics for the liquid fire, liquid lightning mk1 and mk2, liquid carbon, and liquid gold. And from some really good pictures of the massdrop cth, got most of the schematic for that. Did release a liquid gold mini board a while back, just put 4 on a heatsink and add power supply. In fact you can replace the mosfets with bipolar for something that performs much better. the mosfets on the liquid lightning had capacitance so high that they took more power to drive than the power they delivered to the headphones. cavalli's motto is take a well known working circuit and replace as much of it as possible with mosfets, because its moar better. someone we all know well has ordered both massdrop amplifiers. unless massdrop figures out how to prevent the liquid carbon from blowing up, the repairs will eat them alive.

dbel84 once again puts foot in mouth with this gem "I can also tell you that he will not be publishing any of the production designs for DIY. This is not selfish or mean spirited but rather more of a support issue as the boards are 4 layer and very specifically designed to perform the way they do - anyone trying to lay out a 2 layer board will run into some challenges. I had this conversation with him a long time ago as designs were retired ( Liquid Fire ) , and know that his positioned would be unchanged. Laying out boards was a gift that Alex had, I have yet to see anyone so skilled , it was part of the artist in him." I think birgir will agree that alex's layouts are among the absolute WORST that we have ever seen. Specifically for the Liquid Fire, LL mk1, LLmk2 and LG, they are all 2 layer boards with 1 oz copper, super thin lands that wander all over the place, and solder pads that are way to small. The left channel does not match the right channel on the Liquid Glass. The liquid carbon is just a terrible layout. As the stax mafia did in the past publishing every single singlepower design (except for one, never could get a active cable driver) I assume its our job to now publish both schematics and diy boards for every single cavalli product

actually this probably exceeds the singlepower level of failure. Not in the same way, Mikhail walked away with piles of peoples money, but at least for the liquid carbons, one simple mistake with the volume up and plugging in a SE headphone, and the thing blows up. And sometimes it blows up so bad as to burn thru the board, and is now unrepairable. For people outside the usa, by the time you send it in, get it repaired and get it sent back, only for it to blow up again, might as well just throw it in the trashcan. Liquid Fires, now completely unrepairable, i'm sure that Liquid Lightning units are also unrepairable... The SBAF comment is classic. And SO fucked. just remember the first 25 or so people paid over $6k for the liquid gold... Liquid Glass, yep a classic, depending on what tubes you stuffed in there, up to 3 or 4 db of channel imbalance, and no balance control. And this quote from dBel84 is absolutely amazingly delusional " He has struggled to keep CA afloat through numerous challenges and was always willing to sacrifice himself in an effort to do what he believed was the right thing to do. This was not an easy decision for him and I can only support him for doing so"

Cavalli audio page now links to avenson audio for all repairs (and I assume they won't be doing any warranty work) weren't these people the same ones that came up with the impossibly low thd graphs of the original LLmk1? (confirmed yes) all the diy schematics on the cavalli page now gone. I want to know how many investors got hosed, and by how much also this https://head-fi.org/threads/cavalli-audio.862917/

there should be a number of them available. like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lascar-V-600-3-1-2-Digit-LCD-Panel-Voltmeter-w-200-mV-DC-Bezel-Mount-/202078808312?epid=665967537&hash=item2f0cd5e8f8:g:XocAAOSwA4dWJmh7 this is better http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/281/20pc-49051.pdf make sure you understand that the minus input of the voltmeter is in common with the - power supply input and that you have to build a voltage divider yourself because these typically have a range of +/-1.999 Mikhail failed at this by powering the voltmeter with floating voltage and then using it to measure differential output. Ended up frying every single dvm

I doubt that I ever did a ss dynafet. I will look. the latest dynahi and dynalo are both super symmetry, not sure which versions are the lil-knight versions current versions would use either the that340 parts, or a matched quad of linear systems fets

more than just an equalizer, there are 3 companders/expanders in there. so something like a stax ed1 plus a dbx3 (or possibly 3 band equalizer each feeding a compander/expander) for those not familiar with dbx... this thing http://www.ebay.com/itm/DBX-3BX-3-Band-Dynamic-Range-Expander-PARTS-OR-RESTORATION-ONLY-/202076549539?hash=item2f0cb371a3:g:T1IAAOSwm9tZ2pji one of the pictures over there shows the bias board partially populated, so the bias might be as low as 600v, who knows

The volume pots are likely to be linear instead of log because one pot spins the other direction due to the gears 2 active bandpass filters per channel and 3 compand/expand per channel. Lots and lots of signal thru those electrolytics. So maybe an attempt at a near field equalizer? $4k euros for this. very sad

find a gerber that works, gc-prevue or something similar l7815/l7915 are voltage regulators, not transistors

I would expect that to be normal. no way it can work without the servo

Check stax mafia boards thread

here is 2 of them t2parts3cgseditV2.xls t2parts3as.xlsx

messing with the gain probably not a great idea, decrease the resistance of the tail resistors in the front end, or increase the value of the feedback resistors. both will require readjustment of offset and gain

what you are essentially doing is changing the gain on the output tube by a small amount. Something like .1db or so. larger changes in the resistance would change the gain even more. The rest of the circuit will compensate to keep the overall gain the same, so there may be other slight differences. For this circuit the diode is just taking .7v from the voltage from plate thru the resistor to the grid. transformer circuits where the plate will swing negative with respect to ground will definitely respond differently to the diode

I will think about it a while, but it does not make sense. The plate is always going to be a higher voltage than G2/G3, hundreds of volts of AC swing on the plate.

in a push pull circuit with a transformer output, this will keep G3 from going negative. for the electrostatic circuit pretty sure it does absolutely nothing

so what is the diode supposed to do. not much of an extra voltage drop.

i'm not sure if you are the first person to build that particular board or not, but the version 9 board with the to92 worked correctly, and the version you built has just the to92 changed to smt. I would use a scope and signal generator to make sure its working right. Also it has a low impedance input, so anything over a 10k pot is going to cause trouble.

way back when, there were +/-15v regulators just for the opamp. but some of the -15v regulators had issues then, and the voltage ended up -20 or more. this version absolutely requires opa445. if you can get the thing adjusted to 2mv and its completely stable, the opamp is not really required.

measure the voltages on the opamp socket before you stick the opamp in. or possibly the opamp is dead.

that was actually the enamel failure. completely different thing. And those were 6.3V transformers with one of the primaries wired as a secondary

Mikhail called that problem "Acetate Failure" Every singlepower extreme, and many of the others had diode bridge and pass transistor burning

so much can go wrong when you are working on something 20+ years old. So many obsolete parts... The people that know what they are doing probably won't touch stuff they do not own, and people willing to modify your stuff probably are the people you don't want touching it.