spritzer

There were indeed no tubes in the electrostatic output, it was all ultra cheap high voltage opamps. Output power is roughly that of the cheapest Stax amp with worse quality.

Given that Woo Audio makes nothing but utter trash... odds are that this one is even worse than the old one. There are no specifics though but this one might actually be a tube amp...

What resistors are people using on this? I did it all through hole so 50ppm but I've never had real drift issues with 1206 and 2010 parts before.

This has to be the week of stupid mods, cue this 727 in for full surgery and mods. Nothing abnormal on top but below I find this: Hmmm not quite stock that input wiring In and output wires from the volume pot were simply cut and this new monstrosity was sliced into ends. The plan was clearly to bypass the volume control but this is a 727... which has a switch to turn off the volume control and bypass it!! Just flip the switch the volume control does nothing... fucking hell... One more thing, can anybody make heads or tales of this monstrosity? That's two three conductor cables, basic mic cable would do the job but why set it up like this? Each conductor is screened and they are bridging it ever 10cm or so for moar cancellation? Ground for your ground... for your ground? Also, I'm not truly prepared for the 727 to be almost 20 years old at this point. The caps in this one had a date code from early 2007.

Viva are indeed a special kind of stupid as well. I think they use felt adhesive pads for furniture (to protect hardwood floors) to help their crap circuits filled with some of the worst parts available sound better? Yup makes sense.... Seriously, they use those Rifa PSU caps that are known to crack and short circuit in the audio path. If only there were any better parts out there... 🙄

This is something special as none of this actually does anything. Ferrites work at certain frequencies but the wire has to pass through it... not just have it vaguely in the same area. Lumps of aluminum tape and felt on the cables... yeah nothing at all. It seems like a bad DIY project but I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody is doing this as a service and charging a boatload for it.

I wasn't sure where to put this but this is a PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC so might as well be here. Found this thing dirt cheap in Japan, clearly modded and thought... why not. Might be fun... but boy ohh boy this is utter insanity. It was showed as up and running by the seller so I needed to go in and see how I could change the voltage on it. I didn't snap any pics of it when it arrived but here is one once the felt strips had been pulled off... yeah felt strips: That's the bottom so it was covered in these strips. Now I dug deeper: So there was this layer of aluminum tape that was painted and sealed on the edges with this rather coarse paint, almost like the stuff you'd use to make chalkboard finish. Then underneath there was come copper tape and the adhesive on this was nasty shit. I attacked it with IPA, acetone and adhesive cleaner (mineral spirit) and now it is mostly off the outside. I had to use plastic scrapers to get it off and machine polish the top over (due to all the small scratches from cleaning it) but it looks okey. Now I had yet to open it as the top cover is pushed up through the bottom and you need 4-40# screws to do that... something that is impossible to get here. Two weeks ago I found myself in Chicago on my annual visit and Kevin hooked me up with some that did the trick and here is what I found: Now one starts to wonder about sanity and what hose clamps have to do with audio quality but yeah... this is the most insane shit I've ever seen. This is the top cover and here is this paint the whole unit is covered in. No idea what it is but it is rather inert and I had to scrape it off the top and bottom panels. Seriously... hose clamps. This is so retarded it isn't even funny. A few things to note, see those felt strips, same as were on the outside of the unit and those ferrite beads and rods are all over it. Now to switch things up a bit, here is what looks like a brillo pad around the transformer. It's not steel wool and it was around it all. Here is another shot of the steel what ever and those rods glued to the bottom of the chassis. Also see the silver bits attached to the cables... yeah more on that later. Here it is with the cotton? pulled out of it showing what I've stepped into. How many hours did this take? Our lovely hose clamps again but look at that transformer. It is wound in aluminum tape, then the felt, then some rod, then more aluminum tape... Then those rods on the bottom of the chassis... I've started to peel stuff off and it is like an onion Main transformer and in the bottom right hand corner are all the cable ties holding those silver bits on the cables. Yeah, that is about 10 layers of aluminum plus some small ferrites and rods... Why? Fuck knows... Main transformer peeking through the madness as I need to get to it and read its markings to covert it to 230V. I'll have to do some more cleaning but this was just too good not to post...

I like them a lot and they are technically proficient but lately I've been a bit off on ported designs as they lack involvement to me. Not enough engagement compared to the greats but, not nearly as bad as the Hifiman Shangri-la mini where the sound just hangs there. I've been meaning to make a proper review of them but this year as a whole has just sucked.

I got a bag of sockets from Germany (which I suspect are originally from Audio Valve) and they use the Neutrik contacts. Work just fine and I'll be using them in an upcoming project.

The Hifiman plug has to be treated with the same number of fucks they usually give any of the products... fuck all. They are still using that fucking spacer as the pins are too long even on the Shagri-la mini... it would probably completely bankrupt Hifiman if they had to pay for a single new mold and find some new pins... The real measurement might be on the original SR1, SR2 and SR3 plugs as I believe they are the originals off the shelf part from Sato Parts that Stax simply bought in.

Nothing wrong with LCSC, I use them all the time for some hard to find parts.

No, just use the Vishay VR37's as they are the best money can buy and not expensive

That looks like green-brown-green to me which is 5.1M so almost correct but no way that resistor is rated for the voltage. The GES had various upgrades available over the years.

The issue with any Omega is that they are not that well built so you never know what you are going to get. Some are just fine while others have issues, you can see that with the discussion about different serial ranges sounding different. Now I've owned 30+ units over the years and when they work as they should... they all sound the same. If the "grounding resistors" have broken down internally, internal frame issues, micro cracks in the stator supports and other issues... they will sound different but that's because they are slowly failing and need to be fixed. It's similar to tube rolling while not actually using tubes with similar specs... true shock that they sound different. Those are some nice Omega clones. Where are those from?

I aim to please!! I think these are old though... but can't find anything on them.

Hehe, this unit was never set to 115V so unless it was natively 230V, I'd doubt it. There are a few of these floating around out there though, at least 4 have sold in recent months and this one was by far the cheapest.

The pics are too low res to make any values out but it looks like it is multiple opamp stages feeding into a low power push-pull stage. I wouldn't call that reference in anyway. The person doing this doesn't seem to understand RMS values and that bias supply is super sketchy... None of those resistors are rated for that voltage. Clearly voltage divider into RC filters but one 2010 resistor to ground and the ballast is a 1/4W unit? Yeah... no.

Well this one came from Europe but one never knows.

That's never going to happen and interesting to see the headband on what was probably a prototype.

Time for a necro bump but this arrived a couple of weeks ago: Naturally I bought them used as I always wanted to try these and well... they are some of the worst headphones ever made. Seriously... this is so fucking bad it isn't even funny. Now they barely fit my head so that might be a factor but they are somehow very peaky and dull sounding at the same time. Open baffle and all that but the sound is just all over the place. I'm sure these would benefit greatly from an adjustable arc setup and some earpads to close them up. Maybe something like the PMB units, an L-shaped pads at the back of the ears. At the same time I got these, I refurbished what might be the most disgusting SR-Sigma I've ever seen (though the drivers were fine), and they are much better in ever way. Super soundstage, nice extension at both ends of the spectrum and they just sound lovely off a SRM-313. Now I naturally had to rip the Transdyn box apart and well... It doesn't start well, this is the power switch. Yeah... one trace of something conductive and all hell would break loose. Bia Bias supply and why they have it half populated for 230V and then add more parts for 115V is beyond me. Just throw a transformer on it (also for safety). Speaking of which... Gotta love it seeing this trash in there. Rifa caps known for going bad and blowing up right on the mains. This set is fitted with a motorized RK27 but I didn't get a remote control with it. The sensor underneath the front panel. This is actual Transdyn module and I can't say it made much of a difference to me. Another angle. The actual power amp driving the transformer: Not sure what Icepower model that is, haven't looked into it yet. This is certainly a way of doing this... It's hard to tell but no insulation on the mains wiring here either. I don't know what to think about this setup but it does work but looks very silly indeed. I'm tempted to design something long the lines of a 4070 arc setup which would carry the weight and be adjustable as this is not comfy for me. The space between the arcs just isn't wide enough for me. This cable is super thin, roughly 5mm in diameter and to think of the voltage in there... I hope it is made out of something very insulated. Genuine Fischer plugs though these are not the special HV ones used on the HE90 Just normal pins and 12mm across so a S104 plug if I remember correctly.

Woo Audio and Lampazitor in the same system... damn this one is a glutton for punishment

I think they are HD650 pads but they were just some I found in my stash of earpads. I had to trim off the plastic ring at the bottom and attach them with double sided adhesive but it fits nicely on there.

Well he has lost his marbles... I must say though that I feel the same way for current day Stax, they just sound a bit soulless and appear to be lost. They came out with the L series... but why make those changes? What is the purpose of fucking with the imaging on those and the X9000? Take this SR-Alpha Pro (Japanese Gamma Pro btw.) I got this week, it was utterly disgusting when it arrived so earpads and headpad had to go and a lot of time spent cleaning them up. Drivers were perfect though and they did clean up nicely: They sound far from perfect but I'd much rather use these than the 007S. They sound more alive despite their limitations and the tiny driver.

I wasn't sure where to put this either but this should be rare enough, the Sony ECR-800 energizer or the ECA-80 to be precise. Now there is a bit of a backstory to this one, I've never found a ECR-800 but I found this one for a song in China so I had to snap it up. It was in a bad way when it arrived, damage all over and the back sockets all a bit crooked but the worst was inside. See, Sony in their infinite wisdom, used a mercury switch for the input switching and that had broken in shipping. There was mercury all over the inside so I had to clean everything and dispose of it properly. It's a shame as its a very early unit with the custom Sony sockets, they later moved onto using Stax 6 pin sockets with these. I let it sit for probably a year before I decided what to do with it as so a full rebuild was in order. These are 100V only so for my use I need a new transformer, I fitted an IEC on the back, new binding posts with the switch function bypassed and all caps replaced. I also fitted a 6 pin Stax socket to the front as I don't have an ECR-800 and if I ever find one, odds are it will have that plug. Plus this works nicely with Stax normal bias sets. For the circuitry as it is a bit odd for 1978 or so. Most of the what's there is a protection circuit and output relay but the gray brick on the bottom is the bias supply, a DC/DC converter. It has clearly seen some use as there should be paint on there but it seems to work fine and there is clearly a ballast resistor in there too. It's also odd that the transformers have two sets of wires so each socket is fed from its own set of wires. See the 4 purple bias wires too, they are all common on the bias supply.

I like that riser for the power switch and the tubes visible through the front.