spritzer

Soldering of SMD parts will be the tricky stuff as casework is more annoying then hard. I would recommend a good drill press though and good drillbits to start off with.

Yup, at something like 6-700$ for the Koss system new it is a screaming deal even without the lifetime warranty. The BQ isn't that bad and I'm sure we know some woodworkers that could turn them into a HE90-like contraption...

The Koss may look like a cheap piece of shit but its build quality is good enough and far superior to the He60 where it actually counts, i.e. driver coupling and how the drivers are constructed. Both are far from perfect though...

Does the razor require any burn-in and wouldn't a 5+ blade unit be better? U know koz moar iz bettar!!!

My guess would be that Marc is right on the money but asking Ayre would be the best route. Since we are dealing with a real high-end company they will discuss their designs and can stand by them...

I'm not sure what amp that is but it's not a T2, since there are no tubes anywhere. It does look like it originated from this site though I can't find it there... It's the engrish version of me....

All ESP's I've had love the BH except for the He90 since it shines a big, fat spotlight on all of its flaws. As for them being easy to drive, all those comments came from the same crowd that thinks that the He60 is easy to drive as well as the 4070. Couldn't be further from the truth... The only technical specs on the 1.2b is the bias voltage of 600v and since the Stax adapter doesn't have any inline resistors then the charging resistor should be in the 5M range.

A markup that high is sure nice to have and the idiots willing to pay it.

Have a great day, fellow nut!

There has always been expensive hi-fi equipment (old JBL speakers, Marantz amps etc.) but they were expensive to make so that was reflected in the price. Now it's just a matter of shiny boxes with no engineering merit what so ever to see how much the idiots are willing to pay.

That's what I think as well. We can see this here in the headphone community where price is the ultimate benchmark and most of the MOT's are imbeciles. The UK does have a few brands left and Sugden is amongst them.

While Lamm is pure and utter crap they are just one offender on an ever growing list. I do wonder if a company with the mentality of Quad in the old days would survive today with sane prices instead of this absurd crap.

Found the pics of the Lamm. Scroll down...

Take a look inside the 100k$ Lamm amp and fall over laughing. Hammond transformers are good but not that good...

Sure looks like it. Those small brown electrolytics could be Nichicon or Nippon-Chemicon which are used in the Stax amps...

Just to be clear... those are silver Tango transformers. The stock versions are very expensive let alone something like this...

I had the HE90 and all of the Sigmas which will give you an expansive soundstage (washed out to my ears thought the Sigma 404 is the best of the lot) yet I still prefer the more controlled soundstage of the Omegas and ESL's that beam the sound to your head. The soundstage should be large if the recording was mixed like that and not all the time. I'm listening to some Icelandic Best of CD now which covers the last 50years of our recorded history and some songs have a tiny soundstage and on some it is fucking huge. The Omegas portray all of this with ease even when fed by something as non high end as the stock Shigaclone transport though the DAC1. Better is a tough word to use here as the 404 does do some things better then the Signatures but that blasted upper midrange coloration makes them unusable to me. The Signatures are more balanced over all though they do have some of the midrange etch but it is different. I have compared them on a KGSS (my DIY one) but it was a few years ago and the amp has been scrapped for parts a long time ago. There is no way of repairing the Signatures since there are no spare parts available. If you were to send them to Stax, they would just fit them with 404 drivers and send them back to you. You could send them to somebody who has a Signature and ask them to compare sets side by side. One of the dark sides of vintage Stax phones is that they aren't always what they seem. If the drivers have been replaced or the phones tinkered with in any way it is often very tough to tell. If this set has copper colored stators then the drivers should be stock.

Think of it as selected types of gas to enhance the properties of the copper conductor.

I'm looking at a Nextgen socket now and it could be 75ohm since the ground connection is only a thin silver film on the outside of the socket. I don't have a male WBT here to test it though...

I somehow doubt that the mercury would pass the RoHS mandate... Not much of an issue since most of the crap sold in this hobby would never be UL or CE approved.

Make the cables liquid and I'm sold.

From that point of view you are now my mortal enemy and I have dispatched Stax mafia agents to your house... If there was a mafia that is... Is this for a project that will be used on 230v...? That is true but the size of the windings also matters since a given size of wire can only handle so much current before it burns up. Due to the cost of copper they are often wound with wires just big enough.

Add that to the epic size of the SR-Omega driver (90mm across) and it's clear why Stax used circular drivers. The circle is also a very stable shape and resonances spread evenly which was one of the major design targets of the Omega range.

Not all transformers are created equal so this might be an issue with some really cheap stuff. Knowing Marc's tastes I doubt that is an issue here...

The same size of wire is usually used on the entire winding (one size for primary, one for secondary) so current handling in that way shouldn't be a problem.