n_maher

I gotta ask, how the hell does one snap the shaft off an RK27? I've been pretty unkind to things in my days and generally if something can be screwed up I'll figure out how to do it best but I've never managed that feat. And shoot me a PM if you're stuck looking for an RK27, I can toss one in the mail for you any day this week and save you the shipping you'd pay AMB and tangent.

Sounds about right. Before I fixed/modded my amp it ran even hotter, which was at times pretty frightening. I picked up a pretty cheap infrared thermometer from Harborfreight and it's already come in handy for checking things like whether or not a tube has cooled off enough to take out safely.

You know, I'm all for short signal paths but unless I'm mistaken the volume is on the rear panel of that thing. Nothing like having to reach around behind the amp to adjust the fricken volume. At least their normal preamp/headphone amp has the pot at the front.

The Wheatfield runs pretty toasty as well, I think the surface temps are around 120F.

I'd honestly thought about doing that but with how expensive the cases are that I'm looking at it'd put me in the poor house. Also, I just don't see me using much in the way of single-ended headphones any more. My source will be balance and I'll be rewiring all of my headphones so the extra two boards for the ground channels would just sit there idling 99% of the time. Instead I'll probably build a 2-channel amp with those parts (since I already have them) and sell it to offset the absurdly expensive cases.

In my humble experience and based on discussions with others who have far greater listening experience than myself I would say the following, paying less than 3 grand for a balanced beta22 is one of the better "bargains" in high end audio. Granted, with your average DIY build you're not going to end up with something as visually stunning as one of Justin's amps but if great sound is what you're all about then that wouldn't matter anyway. Stephen's price is absurdly cheap. I'm currently revamping my beta22 plans. My original thoughts were for a 6 channel balanced build but I'm now pretty sure that I won't be going down that road. The complications of case size and wasted heat and power resources are pushing me towards a 4 channel build. Decisions, decisions...

I'd read a bit about the FLAC transcoding capabilities which indeed sound intriguing and this thing already had mad bang for the buck. .

Delivered Ian's gift this morning so I can finally post this: SMCWAA-G EZ Stream 802.11g Wireless Audio Adapter Basically a less expensive version of the SB3, can be found for way less than even the MSRP if you're willing to dig. Stock it'll only stream MP3s but for a desktop rig that works for me. Also, thanks to the folks at DIYAudio it was discovered that you can mod the unit pretty simply to have an optical digital output. That'll be one of my next projects since I followed the military model when I picked this up for Ian. Why buy one when you can get two for twice the price? Should make a killer addition to the soldering rig.

I'm sensing you should return the Cardas adapters if at all possible.

Happy birthday to a guy who pours heart and soul into this hobby. Cheers!

I don't, nor to a really believe that there are two unique versions of the K340s. Do different ones sound different, sure, but I'm not sure it's a black and white difference. Also, I don't think that mine has any sort of screen mod done and the highs sound fine to me, of course I lean toward the Senn side of the spectrum so that may just be my preference. I'll try to take some decent pics this weekend and post them up.

Nice, I have a couple of RCA's similar to the ones on the end of your line, pretty nice sounding tube in my book. Unfortunately one of mine is getting noisy and will need replacement soon. I really need a tube tester!

I'm really interested to dig into my 340s. After listening for a couple of hours last night I have to say that this experience with them is going considerably different than my previous one. The first pair of 340s that I had were recabled with Silver Dragon but that was it. I'm wondering if more has been done to this second pair (also recabled, at a minimum) since they sound significantly different from the first pair.

Can't post the last thing I bought, it's Ian's birthday present and shall remain a surprise until I deliver it. I do enjoy torturing him though so I thought I'd post about it in this thread.

It was, in my opinion, damn near television perfection. Sofa king good.

K340s arrived in much better than anticipated condition. They need a recable but have already been converted to dual sided cable entry along with a few other mods. I won't know much till I get them apart but for now I've got them warming up on the Wheatfield to see how they sound.

Hardly, shit happens, people have a life, etc. No worries man, bummer that it doesn't look like we'll pull this off but you shouldn't have any guilt about it. Which kind of lazy Sunday? We talking, The Chronic...what?...les of Narnia?

I heart the Transporter but I'm hopeful that a slightly tweaked SB3 + DAC will yield similar performance, although not nearly as sexy looking.

Haven't heard one yet but I'll certainly be building a mini3 V2.

With the better pictures I'm with Ian, it looks like end grain which is nice, I far and away prefer that to larry-style side grain. This would imply that the only changes are the font and the button. And nice catch Justin, that's a bang up job they did with the lettering.

They've always used end-grain in the past, it's a complete departure (and different manufacturing technique probably) from the previous RS-1 and 2 design. And the horseshoe has always been there Dusty.

Just wondering if anyone else caught the new design of the RS-2s on HF? Items of note: 1. No more endgrain - now done "Larry style" with sidegrain. Pretty weak in my opinion. 2. No more button. I'm sure this was a man'f/labor based decision, one less assembly step and one less thing for folks to bitch about/fall off. 3. New font. Not my cup of tea but I'd have to see it in person to know for sure.

When might you know for sure?

Nah, I'm an asshole, ask Pinky, I should just be ignored. Bring the funnay postjack, bring it old-school.

I'm going to let the Salted one know about this mini-meet as well since he's just down in MA. Maybe he can make the trip?