spritzer

I'm certainly not going to reveal my sources but I can assure you it can be done. I just bought a SR-Sigma for 55$ and a Lambda Signature for 74$. There is often a chance that they won't work but then I'll just have some extra spare parts, no harm done. It is very much possible to put together a killer setup for 500$.

There is only one option in my book, to find a Stax SR-Lambda and adapter for about 200$ (can be done!) add some vintage amp and one of the better 80's early 90's DAC's. Killer system for 500$.

Burn!!!!

The SR-007 should be right up your alley since nothing can do bass like they can and I gather you like the temporary bass heavy stuff. They can track even the most complex bass line long after the He90 and SR-Omega have turned into a bloated mess of reverberations. Damn, you bought the RFT tubes from East Germany. Crimped plates and the dimple are true signs of their origins. They aren't bad tubes by any means and much better then all of the current production stuff but don't pay more then 100$ for a quad. I'm just playing with my newest toy, the Jecklin Floats PS2's, and thinking up ways of making them better. Looks like a SR-007 headband with custom made forks and wooden housing for the drivers. Then I have to have some leather earpads hand made...

1uf does present a problem and if space wasn't a problem I'd go for some large PIO vintage cap as some of them are very good indeed. The humble site seems to be ok and free of the hype that can surround these things and his recommendations are sound. You have of course read the 21 cap comparison that has been floating on the net and while it is far from perfect it is a good reference point along with the humble site and other feedback. I haven't heard those caps so I can't comment on them but you could always find some cheap Soviet stuff on ebay. The class capsule PIO caps are both small and pretty good (and dirt cheap) if you can find them in the correct value. They are Vishay MKP 1841's that I used. I initially bought them as parts for my KGSS but since I buy a lot of extras I had some spare ones and a friend need caps in the value we tried them out and I was amazed at the result. They are certainly much better then the crap Wima is making so it's no wonder the Stax has been using them as couplers all these years even in the ultra expensive SRM-T2.

Well some hand made Kondo silvers would be nice but they'll have to wait until I get a M7 or M77 for my speaker rig. On the budget end the Vishay MKP's are tough to to beat and a much better then most more expensive film caps. You can also try out some of the vintage Soviet PIO caps on ebay but they vary in quality. Going up the ranks the Mundorf Silver/Oils would be my next step. They are expensive but I really like how these caps sound and their 1200v DC rating is a huge plus for us in the electrostatic world. The V-caps are incredibly good but the price is starting to become silly as it would cost nearly 1k$ to outfit a Aristaeus. I still think that they are worth it but better used in the more crucial parts of the circuit. There are other caps that I've spent some time with such as the AN Copper and Silver models, Jensen copper foil and some of the teflon caps and all are great but I can't compare them directly like those other 3. I'd really like to try some AN silvers for an extended period of time but they cost to damn much and I don't like to support AN UK...

The amp is far from worthy of the headphones. It does cover up some of the HE90's shortcomings but that's not a good thing in my book but it's clear the Sennheiser should stick with headphone design. The Aristaeus is a large step up but I'm going to find out just how good it can be loaded with caps that aren't French made crap and some tweaks here and there. I just can't bring my self to buy one of the 12 Aristaeus amps I can have and hack it up. It's far to pretty. There were about 340 HE90's made in total with who knows how many spare drive units stored away. Still the investment is insane when compared to the thousands of SR-007's sold.

They were Audiostatic long throw electrostatic speakers without the wings. Great speakers that look too cool at least much cooler the the Martin-Logan crap

They are simply stunning in person. Its quite sad that something this beautiful and well built is this fragile... You should hear it with the Blue Hawaii... there is mad synergy there. It's clear that the KGSS isn't doing the SR-007 justice since you find them darker then the SR-Ω. They do actually sound pretty similar with the SR-007 a million miles better at everything... I think not using them is the worst you can do to them. That will cause much more stress on the drivers when they are indeed used. If anybody knows about a broken set please let me know as there ways I'd like to try to fix them permanently...

I haven't tried that though I might try some O1 pads as I have some extra ones. The SR-007 pads were pretty bad on the SR-X though...

They really are quite good, especially the Gold versions or N (NB for the black one) as Stax called them. They are more euphonic then the other phones but still manage to convey the essence of each performance. Only if the comfort was up to the Lambda level...

I only open mine if there is a lot of dust on the back grill. You can get new earpads from Audiocubes if yours are a bit worn.

Stax went the same way as Quad because they lost money on some of the production lines while others produced most of the revenue. That is a very stupid way to run a business. There is nothing original about the Orpheus setup except the highly diffused earpieces. Every He90 owner needs to swap the L & R inputs from time to time to see how odd these things really are...

Those that haven't payed 70-100% in import taxes shouldn't really be commenting on this. Am I going to pay 70% on my new 8k$ CDP? Not a chance in hell but it looks like things are going to change here soon. The sad part is he can price his amps this high because of the crazy Stax prices in Europe but there is no reason why they should be so expensive. The parts quality and build quality in the Rudistor amps is much worse then the penny pinched Stax amps and their only saving grace is a slightly better tube compliment... To open up the SR-5 you remove the pads by pulling them off (they could be held in place by two pieces of adhesive) but should come off easily. There are 3 screws underneath and once they are gone the housing splits in two. I see no reason to open them up as unless you want to clean them properly and then stay far away from the drivers...

Did you try all of the compatibility modes?

The Egmont is pretty simple with a floating output stage with no ground reference so it should sound better then a Stax amp but the sound will change a great deal with the tubes as they age and change. Also paying 1400euro for something like that is just nuts. I watched the thread about your Egmont adventures with excitement but like so many before, it disappeared. That's what I would do as well.... .... .... it's also wise to have a record of payment for the declared amount as so two Paypal transactions would be wise... You need a push pull amp and you tap into the signal at the primary of the output transformer so you need to bypass it (or turn it off) and then put a capacitor on each phase and even a resistor bridge to create a 0v point between the + and - outputs. It would also be wise to put a resistor in series with each cap to limit ultimate current.

Deus EX was one of the best games ever made IMO. I really need to play it again while I wait for no.3...

Thanks for clarifying that. I say they are badly designed as the electrostatic amps clipped and behaved in bad manner, something even the HEV70 isn't guilty off...

Even though you had good results from dealing with McAlister you are the minority. Badly designed and built amps that are really still in the prototype form and not ready for a public release. He could get better though while the other two are just getting worse...

It's a bit harder doe to their dipole nature but if non accurate measurements are find just measure between the drivers. If you want to be hardcore buy a Head acoustic headphone measurement dummy head...

The 10mOhm is simply the size of the bleeder resistor for Sennheiser headphones. Not recommended for Stax usage as they work best with 4-5mohms

Hmmmm let me think... .... insane prices for what you get, really bad build quality, horrible circuits that Rudi barely understands himself but are so simple a child could build them. For 10k? I'd expect something more then a 12ax7 tied to EL34's. Heck I'd just buy a Dynaco 70 and put in a new input stage and have a similar amp... for 500$... Talk to me again when you reach 30 phones and have to find a way to store them all...

You can even find RK50's on ebay of all places....

You'll buy them some day, thats all that matters. It's so nice to know what speaker you are going to buy and keep for the next 30 years, not like those dynamic idiots that drift from one coffin to the next.

Rudistor is crap because he is a crap designer and the build quality is beyond horrible. There are many broken Rudistors out there but you can of course not talk about that on HF. Add that to the pretty bad parts quality and high costs and they have nothing going for them. File with McAlister and Ray under "buy if you have no sense or don't know any better".