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TomB

Manufacturer/MoT
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Everything posted by TomB

  1. I'll bring the box of goodies, then!!
  2. If it's a standard DIP-8 opamp, I agree.
  3. I can bring my soldering gear and give it a go. If it's an SOIC-8 opamp, no sweat - assuming one can get to it. I'd have to see it in person to be sure, though. I remember pabbi mentioning a few years ago about having a DIY-section for a meet. Without sounding presumptious, maybe we could do something like that - build an amp or DAC during the day, or something similar.
  4. OK - I took my youngest daughter there for lunch yesterday. Pizza is great and I've never had a pizza cooked and served to the table as fast as that. I mean, we setup napkins (brown paper towel rolls), grabbed some plastic silverware and it was there! For those of you that are familiar, it's on the outskirts of the Georgia Tech campus around 14th St. and Hemphill. The place is unusual as restaurants go. Basically, little more than a hole-in-the-wall and picnic table seating. Although, the "picnic tables" are very large and substantial, so it's not as if you're sitting nose-to-nose with the people across from you. Plus, the seats are small benches that are mobile. They have a large room with the ovens - three of them standing abreast with wood piled up underneath (wood-fired). Then there's a smaller room with another large table and counter seating at the windows. Pizza is definitely fired at a high-temperature. Crust is the almost paper thin type (a little exaggeration) with lots of large bubbles, thicker on the edges and burned - very edible. Cheese is dolloped in 4 or 5 drops, forming mushroom like blobs in 4 or 5 places on the pizza. It was $30 for the two of us with cokes (it was lunch time) but we had half of it left. They pile self-serve boxes to the right of the ovens for people to grab to take home the leftovers. Hmm ... this sounds interesting, but honestly, I'm only familiar with the Vortex. They offer "Laughing Skull" beer, which is distributed nationally, I think. I believe it's a decent lager, but that's about it. They're famous for their burgers, the bikers that regularly frequent, and the giant skull with the spiral eyes that forms the entrance. That would be my top recommendation at Little 5 Points. Of course, they have just about everything else around there - Variety Playhouse for 2nd-tier alternative concerts - Neko Case has played there, the Junkyard's Daughter as a retail smoke store and curio shop, and then they even have a store that sells whips and chains, BDSM outfits, etc., if you know what I mean. It seems like a lot of Atlanta is into the gourmet burger scene - "Flip" is probably the most famous, founded by the winner of one of those Chef TV show contests. They make fois-gras burgers with liquid-nitrogen milkshakes. Then there's Yeah Burger in Virginia Highlands, Farm Burger in Decatur, Grindhouse Burgers on Piedmont (lots of old B movies and robots), Smash Burger in several places, I think, lots of others, too - one in Ansley Mall that I forget the name, lots of Five Guys, etc. 'Course, "What'll Ya Have?" the Varsity is the original drive-in (world's largest) burger and hot dog spot just across the downtown interstate from GA Tech. Cheap, greasy, huge, and with multiple TV rooms and paper hats to wear. Sushi is great, too, the Bluefin in Buckhead, Sushi Avenue - a bunch of others. Chow Baby lets you create your own stir-fry with a cafeteria-style ingredients bar, where you mix up your own for the cooking. Beers - the most famous outside of Laughing Skull is Sweetwater Brewery. Their 420 Pale Ale is available on tap in many of the Atlanta mainstream restaurants. The other stuff they make is fairly decent, too.
  5. Yes, I didn't agree with it initially, maybe that's why I was being cagey. I'm relieved to hear you state the ground rules, though. I sold my TR-50's to smeggy about a year ago, so I can't try them directly anymore, but memories of trying some of Colin's modded Fostex's seemed to be that they required a bunch more power once modded. I think Doug once quoted that the Torpedo can output a bit more than 250mW. Whereas, many people with orthos recommend stuff in the whole watts. That said, I've since changed my mind. Doug's Zener tweak seems to have changed the characteristics of the Torpedo for the better (besides reducing the hum a bit). I would've said it didn't do so well with high-current headphones such as the K701, but I recently tried it out and it sounded pretty dang good with K701's. That's the closest thing I have right now to an ortho load. Your assessment of the build differences between the MiniMAX and Torpedo are dead on (your earlier post).
  6. TomB

    Gerry Anderson RIP

    I'm such a tootie!
  7. "Hmm ... I'm going to have to buy a white sharpie." - what I said to the laser-etch guy when I first saw the results on the black back plates. (220V vs. 120V indication)
  8. Hey Trav! 1. Nate is correct. No soldering guns around here. I would recommend that you pick up a Hakko if you think you'll be into this for awhile. The current "standard" is the Hakko FX-888 and is available at Frys for about $85. It replaced the Hakko 936, which is what I've used for 5+ years. So many clones were being made of the Hakko 936 (Aouye?) that I think they came out with the FX-888 as a defense. Frys also has the plain-jane soldering irons made by Hakko - the Dash at 15W is a very good alternative at about $25. The Hakko stuff I've mentioned is light-years ahead in quality compared to the typical Radio Shack-shit. You know what they say about having good tools ... Be sure you use 63-37 eutectic solder. Radio Shack has some marketed as their "High-Tech SMD" solder, but it's pretty much the same stuff many of us use (Kester 44 63/37). 2. Can't respond to this one directly (without touting my own stuff) except to say that if you've modded the TR50's, you probably need lots of current.
  9. Nice to see you over here, too, Kramer! I sort of disagree about GE and manufacturing their product. At least with the tubes I deal with, and that includes some 12AU7's, GE pretty much manufactured everything. Where it gets confusing is their relationship with RCA. RCA re-branded GE's and vice-versa, but that's because GE created and then owned RCA during various periods and they always had an incestuous relationship. That said, there are some GE's out there that are not really that good when it comes to audio - some of their 5-stars come to mind. I was going to recommend a 5963 - that has always been my favorite 12AU7 equivalent. It typically runs on a lot lower plate voltage than most 12AU7 variants (~70V), but the plates are still rated for 250V. They're often ridiculously cheap compared to many 12AU7's.
  10. Wow! This is really getting exciting!
  11. Read the PM's - sorry I started this mess, but I was asking about having a CanJam Atlanta in the future. It was poor timing, though, and I apologize Brent and Trav. Maybe if we can take notes and use it as a dry run like Brent suggested, but let's stay on track with CanLanta.
  12. OK - CanLanta it is, then. Nice job, Brent! Drew is fairly close - that would be cool, too. Hopefully, Doug will let me show ECP Audio - or maybe he'll come down, too. Is there anybody I could call this week?
  13. Sure - they were nice enough to invite us with Tyll. They're a great bunch. As long as the speaker is not pumping it out all day and we can hear the headphones. Actually, I was going to ask if someone would be interested in an Atlanta CanJam. Maybe that's a bridge too far with this, but it seems like most of the guys who did the last one in Chicago are Head-Casers and could tell us how it's done. It'd be nice to have one in Atlanta in the future.
  14. 4/27 or 5/4 sounds OK. I can't make it before that in April.
  15. Count me in!! I will provide local help, too, if I can - just let me know what you want me to do, Brent.
  16. TomB

    Gerry Anderson RIP

    Never got into Thunderbirds, but I loved Supercar and Fireball XL5 was my favorite!
  17. This: "btw, I was a real skeptic until I changed to a Cardas from stock." Had a friend give me a Cardas cable ... not sure I'd ever buy one on my own, but it made a huge difference on both my 580's and 600's - much, much more than the 650 cable, even. I'm still a skeptic on other headphones, but for Senns - it seems to make a difference.
  18. Yep - give me a PM or e-mail. I'm sort of wondering, though, realizing it would be some work, but as Dsavitsk indicated - all you really have to do is get the paint out of the joining slots and drill or tap the two holes on each end. If you really don't have the tools, maybe we could do a swap? Let me try to fix your painted top cover while you get to use the amp in the meantime with an unfinished top.
  19. Sorry to hear of your trouble. Depending on how deep the scratches are in the powder coat, you could wet-sand with progressive grades of sandpaper, then use rubbing compound to bring back the shine. Some old-school finishes were done this way on purpose. As for the thickness around the mating joint, you could try to cut through it with an X-acto knife (or screwdriver blade, more likely). I'm just guessing, though. I've not worked with powder-coat in the past - just two-part epoxies and other standard paints.
  20. Yeah, what really hurts is when you use the scissors to cut a strip of 600 805-series capacitors into 100, 6-part strips. Cutting through that thick paper/pseudo-cardboard really gets to your hands after a while. Seriously though, many thanks for the kind words. You guys are embarrassing me.
  21. Yeah, I sort of wondered about that. My natural tendency is to include everyone who was involved and to try to give credit where credit is due. You're probably right, though. It wouldn't do to have someone come over here and ask whether their Beats would sound better with this or an O2. Not sure they'd like the answers they'd get. The twerp call has been removed. If that was too harsh a reaction on my part, please let me know and I can restore it.
  22. I guess you found the answer, but I have listened to the Torpedo production model extensively with the HD580 and HD600's. To tell the truth, after hearing Dsavitsk talk a lot about the disadvantages of more metal windings to have to go through at 300 ohms (in the OT's), I wasn't expecting much. Needless to say, I was very pleasantly surprised. It drives 580's and 600's very, very well - almost as good as Grados, and that's saying a lot. (I don't have 650's yet, but they're obviously in the same family.) The first production batch has been on sale at Beezar for a couple of weeks, now. I finally got the website finished today: Torpedo
  23. OMG, Marc! That's fantastic!! P.S. Umm ... who's the audience behind some of those pics? Looks like some of the folk on top of my daughter's piano ... or maybe it's someone I saw in Clash of the Titans?
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