philodox

LOL, okay... I will stop delaying it in that case.

Um, yeah, I know...

Yeah, but I don't have an HP-2... or any Bacon salt... and what the hell would I do with two balanced amps!?!?

I've got a balanced amp that I would be willing to trade for some of that Bacon salt if you're interested...

But a tube with a single triode certainly counts as one tube... it is all a matter of perception. In any case, there are 4 channels, so it would be more like 5 per channel than 10 per side. Each channel consists of one 27GB5 in triode mode, one 6BQ7A with both triodes in parallel and one 6GU7 with both triodes in parallel.

hehe, well, there are 12 in the signal path [the 13th is a regulator tube]. So that is 6 per side... of course 4 of the 6 are dual triodes, so you could look at it as 10 per side.

Yes... which can? It certainly looks hand wound to me... you would know better though. Just read your other reply. The wires coming out the bottom tell you its not hand wound? I wouldn't think they were that identifiable... Anything I can check to confirm? Purk - Haven't really had much time with it yet. It is on load from Konig. I will try to give it a good listen this weekend.

Actually, now that I've actually read the page on the Opus... ...it looks like the output stage is on the DAC board anyways. So, I guess if I want to do a custom output stage I could just use a wm8740 evaluation board or something like that.

Hmmm, maybe a hybrid design?

Now that the amp is basically done I've been thinking about finding a use for 4 6H30 tubes I have sitting in their boxes. Was thinking about building a DAC using: Twisted Pear Opus DAC module Twisted Pear Opus SPDIF module AMB Laboratories σ11 PSU's 6H30 based balanced output stage No idea which design to use for the output stage, but it would be nice if it was an established circuit.

Oh, that's not too bad. Those White Zombie ICs look cool too, but I'm having a hard time finding them credible with a name like that. They look a lot like the ICs Alex was making... is that his company?

What is reasonable to you?

Yeah, it is a pretty big hand wound transformer. It doesn't fill the whole wood box, but a large portion of it. There is also a really tiny transformer in there... not sure what it does, maybe steps up the voltage for the 'big honker'? Btw. Can anyone guess where that vent on the transformer cover came from?

LOL, I've been called worse... but I was home asleep at this point.

Oh god, you went to that concert Eaphan? My Wife came back from Ottawa and got stuck on a bus back into Hamilton with a bunch of drunk middle aged losers... guess what concert they just came from?

Thanks for all the comments guys. I am really liking the way it looks, and the sound is great. Everything just 'working' all the time is a nice feature. I like it a lot. I usually sit in it cross legged when I type and if just listening I can get all comfortable. Yeah, I think I finally have a pride of ownership that is not completely of the 'grunt, more power' variety. He'll see the amp at some point... maybe it will be a wakeup call. I do know that his new helper guy is trying to make some changes in the look of the stock amps, so we might see some improvements there. hehe, I was thinking about putting something like that in the title. [though I was thinking 'amp edition'] Thanks for posting those before pics Renato. There are some in this post as well that show it without the new transformer cover.

Well, it is more of a community than a personal website, so I beg to differ. In any case, I was just making a semi inside joke there. I've got no problem with Jude any more.

Nah, I doubt that would be any better than this singlepower stepper... and I don't even want to think about fitting autoformers in there. I'm loving the feel of it, very smooth.

I should have mentioned in the first post that all of this fine woodwork was done by our very own Steve Tice [swt61]. Steve is so talented and I am more than pleased with all of the work he has done for me. A HUGE thanks goes out to Renato [looser101] for spending all day yesterday working on my amp. While he can be a perfectionist at times, in fact that is why his Wife left him, but his attention to detail really helped everything go smoothly. [the Wife comment is a bit of an inside joke...]

Thanks man, I love it... just need to get the volume knob stuck on there at some point and I'm all done. The only reason I haven't done so yet is because I am too busy listening to it.

Ok, alright, hold your horses... http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,1719.0.html

I'm not going to bother with captions... no need.

You didn't call Jude a fascist did you? I hear he doesn't like that much.

Ysabel was great and it turns out [didn't realize until nearly the end] that it is sort of a sequel to The Fionavar Tapestry. Just read Race Through TIme by Piers Anthony and really liked it, starting on a couple Marion Zimmer Bradley Darkover books soon.

Did someone say my name? Oh man... looser101 was over yesterday for 12-14 hours and we worked on my amp. Replaced the steppers with the new 4 channel balanced singlepower and did a couple tweaks that KG recommended... and the new faceplate is on. I was only really expecting functional changes, but it sounds a lot better! Zero distortion at high volume [was getting a bit], fixed the problem with the leftmost tube socket so that I don't have to do a little dance every time I power up... and I've always been a believer in volume controls having a positive impact, but this singlepower stepped attenuator is just on another level entirely. So smooth, I love it. I've been told that the resistors Mikhail uses take quite a while to burn in too, so I might not even be hearing its full potential yet. I would take some pictures [the wood faceplate looks hott], but I think my Wife has the camera with her in Ottawa. So yeah, definitely go for the amp upgrade first. The R10's are nice, but not $3500 nice IMO. I would personally put the R10, K340 and PS1 all on the same level of refinement at this point... though with different sound signatures. It is too bad the other two cost so much or I might have a couple companions to keep my K340s company.