The pictures don't even come close to doing it justice. Jude has himself one hell of a looker.

 

The tubes on the amp are just massive. I've never seen tubes that big on a headphone amp before.

My God, that amp Frank made is a work of art.  I can only imagine how immaculate it is on the inside.

Spent a little time with Frank's 845 amp/009 too.

Sounds great. He said the 845 plates are running at 800v. I can't remember the driver tube but the inputs are 76(s).

Dan over at Bottlehead has a new headphone amp that was designed for the K1K that uses a pair of 845(s) too.

Very fashionable?

 

I totally fell in love with Craig's Studio amp. Parallel 2A3(s) really made the HD800's sing.

The tubes on the amp are just massive. I've never seen tubes that big on a headphone amp before.

You've never seen the Wheatfield HA-2, then?  Of course it only has one truly massive tube, one large, and one "normal" sized.

You've never seen the Wheatfield HA-2, then?  Of course it only has one truly massive tube, one large, and one "normal" sized.

 

I have now! Wow. Also impressive looking!

 

--

 

After meets I tend to browse the forums and see whether my subjective impressions matched up with the crowd. Browsing Tyll's site, I came across this video of Frank Cooter talking about the amp at a Southern California meet. Very cool and worth a watch.

 

 

Boy are we ever lucky to have guys like Frank Cooter in our hobby.

Did he really make it for Jude?

it was a commission

I was at that meet, and agree with @TMoney — Frank's amp (1) sounds gorgeous, and (2) looks gorgeous. Best-looking piece of audio equipment I have ever thought to see. Reminds me of the woodwork I have seen in palaces in Europe.

Edited July 20, 201510 yr by gepardcv

Biggest compliment I can give Frank is this might not even be his most beautiful case work.

Yeah, somehow I still have a hard-on for that copper one.  I can't imagine wood would dissipate heat as well.  I'd be curious what it looked like after a couple years.

So I've been reading Jason's blog over at head-fi. I have to say, I'm really enjoying it.

 

The guy is nothing if not determined. He also seems pretty honest.

 

The guy is nothing if not determined. He also seems pretty honest.

 

One of the few unfortunately. Wish Ray would make a blog on head-fi about his journeys in designing and selling amps. 

Edited July 22, 201510 yr by DefQon

Here you go:

 

mumble mumble mumble mil-spec mumble mumble

My Friend

One of the few unfortunately. Wish Ray would make a blog on head-fi about his journeys in designing and selling amps. 

 

Well he hasn't even attend any meet these days.  Wonder what he is doing on his sales.  Then again he ripped-off capitalized on the market for so many years so his exotic cars collection must be okay.  He sure did great with his portable amp varieties.

But in fairness, he didn't peddle his stuff alone - he had quite a few enablers... makes you wonder who was worse...

Maybe his sales are mostly oversea now where folks are more into portable gears.

ray is still trying to sell his business.  I think he is down to about $1M by now.

I know for sure 3 people/companies he has offered it to, and all were smart

enough to turn it down.

 

pretty sure his 15 minutes of mil-spec fame are over.

Very over.

It's funny about Ray, I mean he was THE hot shit for so long. Seemed unstoppable. Right as the headphone thing began to take off and the wider audiophile world began to take notice, he started getting mentioned in your Stereophiles and what have you. When I'd be on a non-headphone centric audio forum, his name always came up when people who were not knowledgeable about headphones were asking for amp recommendations. 

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Ray's amps were all a bit too cosmetically bold for my tastes, but still his cases were clean as fuck and certainly got your attention. 

 

And then one day it just seemed like no one cared anymore (by which I mean no one at HF). Weird. Maybe it was the 11th portable amp. Really I think you only need 1 of those.

 

When I'd be on a non-headphone centric audio forum, his name always came up when people who were not knowledgeable about headphones were asking for amp recommendations.

These days it's nwavguy's ODAC and O2 that get parroted on random forums.

These days it's nwavguy's ODAC and O2 that get parroted on random forums.

True.

I have never heard an odac or an o2. And actually I never listened to a single ray amp either.

RSA amps aren't bad sounding but it just very overpriced.  The Apache retailed at $3K when Justin's GSX was priced at 1.8K, and the GSX MKI was better in everyway including the chassis work.  The Apache build quality was only good but not great.  The top plate is made out of a very thing gauge aluminum.  It deforms slightly if you stack something on top of it.  IMO, Ray did capitalize on the market at the beginning thanks to Headfi & RSA fanboys.  His amps also are photographed very well which help push the sales.  I wonder what he did to Jude & other mods b/c they are no longer favor him like in the past.  Maybe Cavalli is their primary supporter now.

Edited July 24, 201510 yr by purk

Well they do sound like shit.  The cRaptor is pretty abysmal (so is the B52 which is the same thing) and the HR-2 is an utter dog.  Let's not get into the A-10...

 

With the portable stuff, there was one of them that clocked a THD of 20+% at the normal IEM load.  Yeah, that's pretty much the definition of crap. 

Isn't the raptor the one that could catch on fire? I remember making the mistake of touching one at an old Chicago meet.

Yup, the power supply got a bit toasty....