spritzer

2SA1968 now will pretty much mean fake. I doubt many real ones are still in circulation as we have been dealing with fakes for about a decade now.

As it turns out...some people are not happy with the Jade.... I'm not sure how this could have happened. Last person on the planet here to defend Hifiman as they produce nothing but garbage...but the headphones are just made from plastic and PCB material. On the inside of the cups, there is a built in mesh into the pads, then we have a grill made from FR4 and doesn't look to have any traces on it. Now it is black so often tricky to see but yeah... doesn't make any sense to put a track on that part. Next up with a have a gap, then the dust cover, then the strengthening rib for the inner stator and finally something electrically conductive, the stator. Now all of this does flex so you could theoretically push your way to the stator but you are still nowhere near the bias. Now the amp is not fundamentally unsafe like the Woo Audio garbage but also not what I'd call safe. The earthing is suspect at best and the amp lacks the right value safety resistors but at least there are some in there. The audio output is AC coupled to the stators so no high voltage DC could be present there. The 1k output resistors would also seriously limit the current if something were to happen...

They fuck it up here even if I stand over them so I completely get that...

That must be it as this isn't terrible at all. I'd pick the ESP950 over it or any Lambda but it's nowhere near the old Jade level of shit.

Looks good!!

That is the best way. You could do something fancy and regulate the bias but I wouldn't bother.

Those are actually silistors and I'd remove them at this point. They don't age well and at 30+ years old... jut them off. The damping is on all sides of the housing and needs to be very dense or it won't work at all.

Yup, sounds like it. Could me a marginal part like a cap or something like that. Well either that or the PSU is failing. It's not the 100V unit, right?

There is nothing about it in the datasheet but in my experience it is a bit longer but not by much.

We've gone over this numerous times but storing any amount of energy after the ballast resistor can make arcing much worse than it would be otherwise. Normally arcing shouldn't be destructive unless something extreme happens. The schematic you posted looks like the ESL63 design which is very old at this point and Stax were even placing caps after the ballast back in '82.

There is no difference to the amp section, it just how they did the tube delay on the early units.

Yup and swap out the tubes. Is the shield on the transformer connected to ground? Ideally it should be earthed...

Crap...I always get that wrong!!

I feel the ginatricot bag is part of minimizing nasty conflicts...

Yup and earth the chassis. I would never leave anything like this floating.

Sounds like it comes from the amp. Should happen with it off though as the caps in there are tiny and can't hold much of a charge.

First thing to try, is there any sound coming from the headphones right after you disconnect them from the amp? It's not a good idea to keep the headphones in plastic bags so I would stop doing that as it can produce charge issues. Second, what power supply are you using for the amp? Hum from the amp is the most likely scenario or coming in from the source.

Well step one for hum issues, keep the input wiring well away from the transformer and its winding's.

Good point...

I just put together the amp and Fang should really fire everybody in the "Hifiman Boston design team" for coming up with this shit. So there is really no good way of assembling this as you can't just put on the front or the back first and connect the internal wires. Nope, they have to hang off at the same time while trying to connect the fiddly connectors. Fucking hell... It will be fun for them to service this shit...

Pretty much... Seriously though, for 500$ this would be a solid set of headphones but for 1500$? Not really... Some points I never touched on, the system comes in two large boxes and the headphones just come in that shipping box. Not even placed in a bag or anything (no desiccant bag either) the issues of shipping will be further amplified.

Yeah, it all looks like that. Well except the cable, if that lasts a year I'd be amazed.

Yeah, I'd go for that as well, hell even the Massdrop ESP950 at 500$ is better than this shit. Also bonus bit, there were holes in one of the dust covers. Yeah...pure quality. I just quickly patched them up with some tape until I have time to replace it. Also there was a small port on the cable entry which I plugged. There are also holes next to the swivel axis so I plugged those too. A small improvement to the bass or it was due to the cable... not sure. Need to do more testing

Well I was finally fed up with the shit cable so out came the tools... One funny thing, I just read through the manual and it specifically states that these have a gold plated plug...which they don't have in reality. Why state something which ever owner will easily spot as a lie? Similar earpads to the Shangri-La Jr. The protective mesh is just a black PCB and the other side even has some production markings on the silkscreen. First reveal and yup...these are 100% pcb. Just stacked up in the baffle and no glue at all. Now comes a pile of pics: It's an interesting design but from a build quality point of view, this is miles away from what Stax are doing. One other thing, the headphones are wired up backwards, + output is wired to the back stator. The back grills just drop out and are not fastened in any way. Time for a new cable. The wide PC-OCC Stax cable is a tight fit but it does work. All done.

Thin and a bit lifeless with reasonably good soundstage. Not bad but not great either and it really depends on what you are listening to. On some music it is unbearably thin while on some it works just fine. The cable is the biggest issue one these though, it's too short and just unsafe garbage. I'm also detecting some noise in the left earpiece so squealing might be an issue with these. Some notes on the amp, the XLR input is completely fake and the - leg of the input just goes through a 630 ohm resistor to ground. Pure class there... The soldering on this thing is world class in the wrong direction, a lot of parts are loose when I try to move them so I wonder if this thing passed through quality control at all. I never turned it on so I can't know if it ever worked. I will go through it and make something usable from this mess though... I was looking up the caps I had never come across and yup, they will be out of there. I'm also going to redo the input section completely as the stepped attenuator feels like garbage. Some 10M90's instead of the load resistors too... we'll see what I can fit in there.