July 23, 20178 yr At long last, I cased my KGSSHV - my first foray into Kevin's Wonderful World of DIY ES Headphone Amps. Although its glory has been over-shadowed by the HV Carbon and the Grounded Grid alike, the KGSSHV is really a damned fine sounding amp in its own right to my ears especially when set up to run at higher output current. There are many versions of KGSSHV out there starting from the on-board heatsink version that runs around 5mA output current to the later off-board versions. This one runs at a toasty 15mA and raised VAS current and is powered by the same GRHV/GRLV universal PSU I use also for my Carbon, Blue Hawaii and Grounded Grid. Edited July 24, 20178 yr by mwl168
July 23, 20178 yr I like your pot-less builds! What are you using as preamp, or does your DAC have preamp function?
July 23, 20178 yr 1 hour ago, mypasswordis said: I like your pot-less builds! What are you using as preamp, or does your DAC have preamp function? I don't use a preamp. My DAC has a digital volume control and it feeds the headphone amps directly.
July 24, 20178 yr 5 hours ago, Rossliew said: Sound impressions please! Did you miss the one sentence essay? Nice Michael.
July 24, 20178 yr 2 hours ago, johnwmclean said: Did you miss the one sentence essay? Nice Michael. 16 hours ago, mwl168 said: Although its glory has been over-shadowed by the HV Carbon and the Grounded Grid alike, the KGSSHV is really a damned fine sounding amp in its own right to my ears especially when set up to run at higher output current.
August 19, 20178 yr Moved post to appropriate thread Edited August 21, 20178 yr by Whitigir Moved thread
January 12, 20188 yr Not sure if we have a KGSS thread but I'll just post this here. So last year it dawned on me that I built my first KGSS amp 15 years ago and something had to be done to celebrate that. It started off pretty mild with me reworking Justin's old KGSS board file, changing parts as needed, updating and the like to what we do now. Then it hit me, that's too easy so I went off the deep end. I wanted to do something unique so why not the smallest high performance amp I could possibly do? The KGSS offers some advantages over the KGSSHV here, fewer parts due to the resistor current sources in the third stage. Now there are performance issues, we all know that but this is how the KGSS was back in the day. The plan was to be authentic so 2SK389 input devices and the only major change being a switch to 2SC4686A's from the 2SC3675's as they are simply superior and fully insulated to boot. Power supply is similar to the old KGSS and is a reworked one from my cheap KGSSHV. 2SA1627A based CCS with the regular fet output for a +/-350V output. The output stage current is set to the standard KGSS setting which is ideal for this tiny chassis. So how tiny...this tiny... Pictured here in the KGSS normal habitat, with a SR-007BL mk1 and a Stax HPS-1. I did say it was tiny... 21cm wide, 29cm deep with the knob and just 7.5cm tall. That doesn't leave a whole lot of internal room so very strict transformer specs, about 15 drafts of the fully through hole amp boards to make the ground plane work and for it all to fit strict height requirements of the parts used. So here are the internals... Now you can please excuse me, I'm going to go and listen to some early 2000's music on the 007Mk1's...
January 12, 20188 yr 59 minutes ago, spritzer said: Not sure if we have a KGSS thread but I'll just post this here. So last year it dawned on me that I built my first KGSS amp 15 years ago and something had to be done to celebrate that. It started off pretty mild with me reworking Justin's old KGSS board file, changing parts as needed, updating and the like to what we do now. Then it hit me, that's too easy so I went off the deep end. I wanted to do something unique so why not the smallest high performance amp I could possibly do? The KGSS offers some advantages over the KGSSHV here, fewer parts due to the resistor current sources in the third stage. Now there are performance issues, we all know that but this is how the KGSS was back in the day. The plan was to be authentic so 2SK389 input devices and the only major change being a switch to 2SC4686A's from the 2SC3675's as they are simply superior and fully insulated to boot. Power supply is similar to the old KGSS and is a reworked one from my cheap KGSSHV. 2SA1627A based CCS with the regular fet output for a +/-350V output. The output stage current is set to the standard KGSS setting which is ideal for this tiny chassis. So how tiny...this tiny... Pictured here in the KGSS normal habitat, with a SR-007BL mk1 and a Stax HPS-1. I did say it was tiny... 21cm wide, 29cm deep with the knob and just 7.5cm tall. That doesn't leave a whole lot of internal room so very strict transformer specs, about 15 drafts of the fully through hole amp boards to make the ground plane work and for it all to fit strict height requirements of the parts used. So here are the internals... Now you can please excuse me, I'm going to go and listen to some early 2000's music on the 007Mk1's... Looks good. Cheers. You happy with it?
January 12, 20188 yr Really nice work Birgir! Congrats on your 15 year anniversary. What a treasure of ideas and innovations you and Kevin have given us
January 12, 20188 yr Here's to the next 15 years!! 2 hours ago, Forza AudioWorks said: Looks good. Cheers. You happy with it? I like it a lot.
January 12, 20188 yr Looking great! Got a loop out? Would love to see a side by side picture of the KGSS mini next to KGSSHV mini. Edited January 12, 20188 yr by purk
January 12, 20188 yr looks like only one set of plugs in the rear, and no extra roomThat’s what she said.
January 12, 20188 yr 5 hours ago, spritzer said: Here's to the next 15 years!! I like it a lot. Birgir, I saw this on your home page! Just came here to ask if you have any thoughts of producing a few for sale? EDIT: nvrmnd. I see you are indeed selling these. Turning a friend onto this one..... Edited January 12, 20188 yr by Blueman2
January 12, 20188 yr 4 hours ago, purk said: Looking great! Got a loop out? Would love to see a side by side picture of the KGSS mini next to KGSSHV mini. I'll see what I can do about that. 12 minutes ago, Blueman2 said: Birgir, I saw this on your home page! Just came here to ask if you have any thoughts of producing a few for sale? There are three amps in this batch with one being for me so two up for grabs. I have parts for a few more but this isn't a pleasant build...
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