DefQon

Ha i was going to mention that you sold your sigma 404s on ebay as i messaged you about why you were selling your Stax. Anyway that drongo happens to be on headfi offering repair services to any imbalanced pair of Stax Omega 1`s. A buddy of mine tipped me off when he got the same story from some Euro guy saying my ex Sig pros were fake and all he wanted was lowball the price. I would`ve told him straight to get fucked.

I read about the $10000 ethernet cable, what a bunch of fuckery and bullshit that is, simply defies the Ethernet standards let alone any sort of compliance made by engineers decades ago. The thing is if you're a uneducated bloke with deep pockets walking into an audio store to buy stuff, chances are the salesman will make sure you walk out the door with one of those cables.

No wonder the many sets I've owned and seen dissembled online had various Stax drivers. I guess without the internet back in the 60-early 70's Stax did not know that he was pulling their ear speakers apart for PWB's personal experimental models for profit.

You liking the Sony Grawk?

Nope. Only US 117vac and 100v Jap primary AC windings are present. Padam, can you take some pictures of the wiring from the RCA inputs to the switch? I need it as a guide so I can finally rebuild my SRA-3S. Any some pics as promised last week since my last post. ECR-400 drivers disassembled and whatnot: This is why one side was not working: Dual pentagonal spacers. Mylar is tensioned and epoxied to one side of the spacer while other is sandwiched when secured between the stator and housing assembly. Each spacer is approx 0.20cm's thick. Need monster bias level to drive them to acceptable levels. Roll of mylar purchased from ERAudio Australia. They specialise in Quad, Final and ML speaker repair kits. Ready to convert the ECR-400 to a full E-stat: Only thing I'm waiting for now is Nylon non conductive M2 screws with M2 bolts and grab some pro-bias cables. The ECR-400's one is held together by brass ones but I don't want arcing as the screws going through the 3 holes shown above on the spacers. Isolation is key here. Anyway here is a pic of the PWB Electrostat I received over 2 weeks ago, this is the 4th PWB set I've owned and since I've gone back to collecting vintage E-Stat headphones, all 4 sets are different to each other one way or another from housing type used to transducer variations, it seems Peter W.Belt was more experimenting then solidifying a single product without so many damn revisional changes here and there. He was a bit of a audio lunatic like Patrick82 but back in the 60-70's. There are basically 4 versions of the PWB stats: 1. Same as below but white housing, same drivers (SR-3 New based) came with single headphone output socket on the adaptor. Maybe Peter W.Belt had a license or deal directly with Stax to use SR-3 New drivers, who knows? 2. Yellow housing (shown below), SR-3 New based drivers or unknown black drivers, mostly came with the dual headphone output socket adaptor like the one that I received, no different to early Stax adaptors except bigger step up output trafo's used and thicker internal wiring. The PWB's that used the Stax driver operate on the Stax standard 230vdc normal bias, the PWB's based on black drivers (nick n on Head-fi posted some pics some years ago) supposedly would work on Stax NB as well but I don't own my pair with black drivers so not sure. The design concept is not really different to Stax drivers and this was before pro-bias. Way before. 3. Black housing, late pairs may have hand written serial number inside the baffle, baffle holes are similar to Stax SR-5 baffle but black. Uses Stax SR-3 drivers. These are early pairs after yellow/white housing production units. 4. Black housing, different logo, electret driver straight from Stax SR-40 units. Avoid these ones because they are not true ESL's and sound like shit as Peter Belt overdamped the open back of the drivers preventing any room for drivers to breathe. The Stax SR-30, 40, 50 and 60's are damped but only a single cotton disc. If you stumble across a pair most likely one channel is dead with heavy imbalance. One side removed: Driver: Stax SR-1/2 style baffle, no angled groove like later SR-3, 5 units, the earpads had no foam inside and was double sided taped to the baffle. So while this pair worked there was overblown bass and heavy distortion on low end passages, problem was the mylar was over-driven throughout the headphones life and loosened itself from the original spec'd tension, so had to dissemble driver and re-mylar both sides and make a new dust filters using mylar (not scrunched): Old mylar, double side taped between sandwiched spacers: How do they sound? It's all about the mids. Quite nice and lively.

Im interested in a gb for kgst boards.

Well they are desoldered atm, how do I test them? Diode test according to the datasheet as if single fets? I did it briefly while they were still in the amp and my dmm still gave me values, might change now that they've been isolated from the rest of the circuit?

Or buy a stash of chokes and hook up the AC wires to it.

Is there any new equivalents from Linear Systems that can be substituted for EOL Toshiba 2SJ109 dual jfets? I know dual 2SJ74's can be done to give one J109 but it's hard to match by specs. Both 2sj74 and 109's are hard to source and very costly ($20-50 a piece for genuine 109's) when they do show up. I've got a problematic (I think) 2sj109 in an SRM-3 amp that keeps blowing a nearby 100ohm resistor and the led light indicators in the output stage do not light up.

390 Euros is pretty good price for a pair of working Sig Pro's. Got my Sigma's for $460 shipped and my Sigma Pro's with original box and all which I regret selling for $600 and sold it off for alot more then what I paid on ebay via auction.

Yeah but those are still on the very high side from sellers who have no clue what they are selling only because they see the word Stax and vintage. Anyway going to upload some pictures of a rare pair of PWB electrostat's I received few days ago. Interesting drivers for sure, Peter W Belt obviously had no clue what he was doing as there was alot of fuckery going on with the e-stats he offered in the late 60's to early 70's. So many variations. Uploading pics when I get the time.

Sig Pro's would never reach to this level of wtf over past few years, usually ending around 650-800 usd after conversion This is a new level of http://www.buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/m129984042 Was the highest bidder yesterday at 60k yen till somebody bumped it to 161k.

Which I always wait a week or so before making any proper reviews or impressions on new toys.

Yeh its fascinating really, Elega even had it's own limited edition flagship dynamic in the 70's dubbed the XO-1 at around 75,000 yen which was incredibly expensive for its time later the record was broken by Sony's R10. What else I want to know is there another OEM or manufacturer we are missing that were first to do electret headphones or even electostats, maybe Stax was the first for esl stats? Who knows. Btw spritzer how was the Toshiba HR1000 electret headphone when you owned them years ago?

Just updating this thread a little as I've found a piece to the missing puzzle. Many e-stats from the late 60-70's were cloned after the Stax SR-3 lineup. Stax was actually not the first to do electret headphones. Fujiki Electronics also functioned under the brand Elega from the 60's experimented with electret transducers for headphone use in the mid to late 60's, they were also the OEM supplier for the early Sony ECR models released in the early 70's abd approx 1974 for the 500 model. Elega also had there own e-stats and electrets but are just as rare as the Stax SR-2 and were made in limited quantities and absolutely unobtanium.

Think my pair is botched then. I've got shit loads of mylar now since I need to keep some spares to repair my Final and Quad's in case things go south, have everything except the epoxy maybe I'll convert them to full blown e-stats.

Anyway: http://www.buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/h197454976 Looks like a 3S circuit converted to half of an SR-X circuit.

Does your ECR 500's distort on very low-end frequency with bass heavy passages?

Didn't work for me nor did the ECR 400's on any of my Stax amps, I don't get much sound out of em. Do you have the adaptor for your ECR 500?

Maybe I've got an odd duck, I'm usually sensitive to bright treble so I would be able to call it out for being ruthless on the ears.

But have you tried them on the GS-1? What no way I would put any Ultracrap and it's "S-Logic" technology above all else for a major sibilant and treble earbleeding experience, my ears are still ringing after selling my 2400's and LE8's.

Well that depends on the user and there tolerance of treble, like every headphone the HD800's stock can sound awfully bright with the wrong gear and source. Not saying you have to try the SA5k, but given the chance try one with the GS-1 or the older Gilmore amp's, sounds great. Just putting it out there.

Well each to there own, I've got both here and been listening to it for few days now and they have similarities in the sound signature, the only difference is the sound-staging and low level detail retrieval where the HD800 pulls ahead. While the HD800 has a 5-6k treble emphasis the SA5K is a bit more colder on the highs, can be mellowed out with good amplification, was using a loaned GS-1. I've heard the SA-5k's years back and they sounded piss poor and I remembered few people telling me to listen to them on some good ss amplification that can drive low z headphones properly, bought the SA-5k's last week and they sound quite nice.

They are a chameleon on there own. I recently pulled the trigger on the Sony SA5k's as they've got similar sound traits to the HD800's, would advise any hc'ers to really give this headphone a go if you're on a budget and want 90% of an HD800.

This one of your builds spritzer? http://www.ebay.de/itm/ROHRENVERSTARKER-Vollrohre-fur-elektrostatische-STAX-Kopfhorer-PRO-ONLY-Omega-/141550425325?pt=Kopfh%C3%B6rer&hash=item20f51014ed