cotdt

Great! I got a ton of 2SJ109 & 2SK389 that I've stockpiled. I was going to throw them away, but now I've got a project for them.

i have. long story short i don't think any SS amp can beat the Beta22 (as far as my own tastes go), but the Apache does offer the RSA house sound just like the SR71 portable amp. it has a thick, palpable midrange that can be pleasing depending on the music.

i compared gold-plated versus silver-plated headphone plugs. didn't notice any difference.

here's mine: putting a donut-shaped magnet (like a speaker magnet) around your power cable changes the sound.

that's terrible, hYdrociTy. you sure it can't be repaired?

Ha ha! That's very funny, but very true.

they charge quite a bit for such simple and cheap mods

in all the amps i've heard, balanced sounded more transparent than single-ended. the 3-channel active ground does lower output impedance, but does nothing for slew rate. full balanced is the way to go.

come back to head-fi and wreak havoc

i'm using the default transistors, and it's warmer and more natural sounding than the Gilmore V2SE.

M^3 is warmer. the Dynahi and Beta22 are even warmer. the CK2III is also a very good amp and very easy to build, but yeah the M^3 is warmer. i prefer the CK2III personally. all the FET-output amps i've heard are quite warm, while the BJT-output amps can go either way.

happy bday!

i used Mogami for my balanced K701s, and it is very good cable. it should work well with Denons also.

try disconnecting earth ground

3dB or 6dB of attenuation is not enough and will only give very slightly more play on the volume knob. You need maybe 10-20dB of attenuation if 9 o'clock is already super ultra loud. This works very well, and cheap (just a couple resistors): http://goldpt.com/mods.html (under Pre-Attenuation)