TomB

I know Harbor Freight is a dirty word when it comes to quality tools, but seriously, I've had very good experience with this center punch: - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices They sell different ones from this, so perhaps the other ones they sell are not very good, but this one has seemed to work well for me. I've purchased a couple of them on sale for $2.99. Maybe you have to have Harbor Freight drill bit tips to match up with the center punch indentations. I use those, too, so maybe it helps : - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices (The one on the left is indespensible, the middle one is OK, the one on the right is useless.)

Actually, did anyone notice in the past couple of months that Koss had transitioned away from Radio Shack and on to Best Buy? Best Buy now offers an updated version PortaPro - black band, cloth leads, etc. - not really the anniversary edition, but close. I haven't seen the KSC75 there yet, but they have the UR40 and at least one other model. One wonders if this relationship was going to grow. Bad timing all the way around, I guess.

I called my broker last week and told him to sell as soon as I saw this thread, but he told me it had already stopped trading. No doubt, many others will try to sell, too, regardless of the results from the SEC. It sounds like the halt in trading is only delaying the inevitable - perhaps a run to zero share price. I doubt that any of us will recoup anything. It's hard for me to say this, but in a philosophical sense - no company should be allowed to survive in the face of that kind of management negligence.

Grainger is where I get all my hardware - lots of socket head 4-40 and 6-32 cap screws, among other things (they go smaller). Their prices are cheaper than McMaster-Carr and they have walk-in stores in most medium to large cities. They are a distributor, though, so you have to have a business account or know someone who'll let you buy on theirs.

Actually, talking about disgusting album art by the Dirty Projectors, I was referring to this one: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wPIIrQ4yL._SL500_AA240_.jpg Sorry, but I'm not going to post that image directly. Dang! What a revolting sight during breakfast.

Great CD! Some of their previous CD's have some really disgusting looking artwork, but this one's a keeper on both counts.

Umm ... these two are great!

I've used these that you can get from Staples: (The Grado box is gratuitous; I was trying to sell them at the time the pics were taken.) The foam fits exactly - no modding required. The only issue is that they're so flat they'll only take the plastic cup Grados or the HF-1's - nothing thicker (SR225's are in the pics).

ELBOW - The Seldom Seen Kid

I ran with the 650 cable for about a year. I went back to the stock cable, mainly just to see if I could re-install it properly before considering making one on my own. Turns out, the steel cable sounds loads better - plenty of oomph, but with a great high-end sparkle. The 650 just sounded dull in comparison. I put it on in the first place because the sibilance was awful right out of the box. I guess it really needed to break-in. Doug, Sorry to read about this experience! Personally, I think you're going to have a hard time finding something else you may like since you like the Grado sound so much. The K701 comes closest in detail, IMHO, but is essentially lifeless in the bass punch department - not very musical, either. The HD25-1 II's are very nice (love mine!) and everything these guys say they are - but they're still not that close to Grados, IMHO.

Hey! I didn't say I gave up listening to Neko Case, just that Patty Larkin is a very good replacement inbetween more releases.;) These two are very good, too: She's been doing albums since 1985! She also produced a compilation of female guitarists back in 2005 - La Guitara. It just amazes me sometimes to "discover" someone this good when none of my friends/family have even heard of her. She's not even on the radar at metacritic.com. I just caught a review by Parke Puterbaugh (my favorite reviewer) on Sound and Vision and it sounded interesting. Needless to say, I was mightily impressed. Just wanting to share ... ;)

Patty Larkin - Watch the Sky My new "Neko Case" - Patty Larkin is one of the best guitarists I've heard in a long while, to boot.

Sounds good - good luck!

I just built one over Christmas from parts bought at my local Fry's. It cost me right around $900, but probably could've been much cheaper if I had mail-ordered from somewhere. Just MHO, but I'd stick with Intel as well - even the motherboard. You don't want any problems. Antec makes great cases that are cheap and come with power supplies (<$100). I got a full-size tower w/power supply at Fry's for $75. The existing case is probably a no-go. Core-Duo's have special cooling duct/fan that's ported directly out of the side of the case. Again, just MHO, but I'd rather go with a Seagate drive than WD and 360Mb is pretty small these days. You can easily get 1TB for $100 today. There's also the possibility of a 10Krpm drive which will enhance the overall speed of your system - space is about half as much (500mb?) for the same price, I believe. Some issues you may encounter - you may have trouble if your existing CD drive is IDE. I couldn't get the operating system to boot until I purchased an SATA CD drive. Using an existing OS may also be problemmatic. Sometimes those things are coded specifically to a motherboard (as with Dell's OS's). They may not have the full complement of drivers, either. Better to get an OEM copy of Vista (Business preferred) and start fresh.

From what I've heard and read, Smeggy - the EHHA should be the ideal DIY candidate for K1000's. Steinchen said his EHHA made his K1000's "sing." Be sure to find those 6GM8's first, though. That's the long pole in the tent: finding 6GM8's. Many tube vendors should have a handful, but no more.

Looking forward to it ...

Yep - that's what I thought, too. The massive four-bladed prop was standard from the beginning (special extension struts on the landing geat to get ground clearance). The D model was still a "razorback" in the beginning, but adding the bubble canopy was a significant improvement. The N version brought back a dorsal fin on the vertical stabilizer because they lost a bit of stability from removing the razorback.

Koss is a publicly traded corporation, but AFAIK, their prospectus indicates they're still essentially a family business ... a family with the last name Koss. They still pursue the Pro 4 line: the Pro4AAAT with ventilated cans, titanium coating, and swiveling cups is the latest achievement in that venerable series. If they'd just get rid of the pnuemalite cushions in favor of some up-to-date velour, maybe they'd have something. Meanwhile, they own the low-cost, <$50 market with the KSC's and PortaPro's.

Sorry, I'm not trying to start anything, but the first response you got to your question in this thread had the potential of leading you astray. Yet, considering the estimable reputation of that source, we were trapped into citing real documents to get you back on the right path. Put simply: stay with 2X on sizing resistors for power rating and stay with metal films (preferrably Vishay-Dales) to reduce the noise to the least amount possible. Also note that V-D resistors are typically already over-rated at 2X on power. If you start asking about boutique resistors, then it's another issue entirely and opinions will be all over the map. Hope that was simple enough ...

Are you asking for moderation?

Well, that's interesting and sort of what I was surmising from the references I found. Your reference goes so far as to say that "Wire-wound resistors do not have this noise - only those with carbon particles." (contact noise). Again, that also sounds like metal films are completely immune to this larger size/less noise phenomenon.

Sorry, but I'm still skeptical. Thermal/Johnson-Nyquist noise is familiar to all, but focuses on resistance, not physical size. This reference seems to focus on something called "Contact Noise" to justify that larger resistors have less noise. Yet, there's no reference for that section, no derived basis in predictably or proof. Plus, he references mainly carbon comp resistors in guitar amps. Carbon comp have many issues all on their own - it might be quite possible that larger is better in that case. However, I'd like to see more evidence before believing this for metal films or that a 1206 SMD resistor would have less noise than an 805, for instance. EDIT: It looks like there are some other references to contact noise, but it appears to have to do with the fluctuating "contact" between materials, otherwise known as "flicker noise." It's probably called "contact noise" because the effect is predominate in metal contacts (again, where larger is better seems to make common sense). If someone has an IEEE membership, perhaps they can look up the complete article on this reference: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel6%2F33%2F25361%2F01136638.pdf%3Farnumber%3D1136638&authDecision=-203 Again, the issue seems to have a great effect in carbon comp resistors due to the granular nature of the composition material - lots of miniature contact surfaces between the granules. It makes sense that if a resistor was bigger for a given resistance value, then the contact surfaces would be maximized, lowering the potential noise. I'm still skeptical that this applies to metal films and the way in which they're constructed, however.

Hmm ... I usually size resistors for 2X power rating. That should be plenty safety factor, assuming you know for certain the voltage involved and you use quality resistors. I've not heard that larger resistors might have less noise, either. Seems that if that were true, SMD resistors would be the noisiest.

In that case, I vote for the Eagle.

The full version of Eagle sounds good, but isn't he a Prof in Texas? Seems he would have access to a significant educational discount on software, anyway. Another vote for the HD800 if that's the case ...