mrarroyo
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Our man in Miami!
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Post by mrarroyo on Mar 11, 2010 1:11:48 GMT
The people at Bottlehead have a new valve kit for sale. They had various tubes and parts and thought it would be a good idea to put together a kit at a low cost with plenty of modification potential. Well, they have come up with the Crack Amp, an OTL headphone amp that retails under $200 USD. The amp comes with enclosure and a custom made and laser cut plate. Like other offerings it is all top mounted and point to point wiring. The kit can be bought with transformers to accomodate other parts of the world. To quote the Bottlehead website: A 12AU7 configured just like the "front half" of the Foreplay III is direct coupled to a 6080 tube configured as a cathode follower. To keep the kit price manageable (the kit is about 1/4 of the price of some past OTL amps) we use surprisingly nice sounding Panasonic electrolytic capacitors as the output coupling capacitors, but of course our kits often induce tweaking - in fact we imagine Crack may become the biggest cause of tweaking yet. You could spend more on different large 100uF film capacitors than you than you did on the kit and spend hours putting in different caps and comparing them. And of course you can tweak to your hearts content tube rolling different 12AU7 and 6080/6AS7 variants. Your can read more about the Crack at: www.bottlehead.com/store.php?crn=44&rn=442&action=show_detailYou could also check their forum for more information and tweaking potential.
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Post by clausdk on Mar 11, 2010 1:45:00 GMT
I got one that is called Pharos ear it looks a lot like it..
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insomniac
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Team Zopiclone
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Post by insomniac on Mar 11, 2010 2:24:48 GMT
Not sure about the marketing of this amp named after a drug that makes users rob and steal. I wonder if any of their homes have ever been burgled by Crack-heads? From the site: "Crack affects the brain chemistry of the user causing euphoria, supreme confidence, alertness, increased energy - and a craving for more crack."I'm waiting for their next model.... The Methamphetamine
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2010 2:30:29 GMT
Not sure about the marketing of this amp named after a drug that makes users rob and steal. I wonder if any of their homes have ever been burgled by Crack-heads? From the site: "Crack affects the brain chemistry of the user causing euphoria, supreme confidence, alertness, increased energy - and a craving for more crack.
Just like with Tiger Woods ?
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Post by clausdk on Mar 11, 2010 2:42:05 GMT
Not sure about the marketing of this amp named after a drug that makes users rob and steal. I wonder if any of their homes have ever been burgled by Crack-heads? From the site: "Crack affects the brain chemistry of the user causing euphoria, supreme confidence, alertness, increased energy - and a craving for more crack."( Well mine is not capable of doing that, maybe it need to be modded ;D ;D ;D
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robertkd
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Electronics Engineer from sunny Queensland
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Post by robertkd on Mar 11, 2010 2:50:25 GMT
Not sure about the marketing of this amp named after a drug that makes users rob and steal. I wonder if any of their homes have ever been burgled by Crack-heads? From the site: "Crack affects the brain chemistry of the user causing euphoria, supreme confidence, alertness, increased energy - and a craving for more crack."I'm waiting for their next model.... The Methamphetamine perhaps then MDMA gets rid of the craving for more and leaves the rest ;D
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jonclancy
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Mr. Ripple Eater
Amateur EAGLEist
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Post by jonclancy on Mar 11, 2010 16:32:22 GMT
I dunno - just sounds like another "slightly rude word" name for a Bottlehead product. Viz Quickie, Eros, Single Ended eXperimenter's Kit, Seduction, Foreplay III, Extended Foreplay III, etc Expect the "Moist", "Crevice" or "Fescalised Portion" to come (fnarr!) any time soon...
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mrarroyo
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Our man in Miami!
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Post by mrarroyo on Mar 11, 2010 23:26:15 GMT
Guys, this is kit for $200 USD with a good support system via the Bottlehead Forum. It was just announced and now the members will build them and start tweaking, hopefully most of the tweaks put together will add just a few dollars (unless someone goes crazy and puts a $2,000 USD power cable on it).
Many are all the time claiming that some kind of a kit is needed to get people back on DIY. Someone does and all I read is members criticizing the name. Yes the name is not the best but so what? It should be how it sounds and how tweak-able it could be.
Cheers.
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leo
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Team wtf is it?
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Post by leo on Mar 12, 2010 0:42:25 GMT
Being OTL this would be dead cheap to build
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2010 1:10:27 GMT
Miguel The 1st tweak should be to get rid of that cheap and nasty dual gang potentiometer. Alex
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jonclancy
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Amateur EAGLEist
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Post by jonclancy on Mar 12, 2010 20:37:14 GMT
Someone does and all see is people criticizing the name. Oh, I don't know, Mig.... Made me snigger... Seems to me the hardest bit of that build is the woodwork... and not zapping yourself with HV. Cheers Jon
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XTRProf
Fully Modded
Pssst ! Got any spare capacitors ?
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Post by XTRProf on Mar 15, 2010 5:11:12 GMT
OTL, nay, not for me after seeing people blowing up their speakers when the amp decided to go on a terrorist mission. OTL should be the purest form of valve amps but in terms of fried up $$$$$$$, NO, NO, NO .............. especially expensive speakers and cans.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2010 5:24:04 GMT
OTL, nay, not for me after seeing people blowing up their speakers when the amp decided to go on a terrorist mission. OTL should be the purest form of valve amps but in terms of fried up $$$$$$$, NO, NO, NO .............. especially expensive speakers and cans. Chong At the very low anode voltages the guys here have in the vast majority of their valve headphone amplifiers , the risks should be minimal. Anyway, if it is good enough to use Speaker protection PCBs with decent SS amplifiers, it shouldn't be too hard to use something similar with valve amplifiers. Alex
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rowuk
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Pain in the ass, ex-patriot yank living in the land of sauerkraut
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Post by rowuk on May 1, 2010 23:10:31 GMT
OTL, nay, not for me after seeing people blowing up their speakers when the amp decided to go on a terrorist mission. OTL should be the purest form of valve amps but in terms of fried up $$$$$$$, NO, NO, NO .............. especially expensive speakers and cans. Chong At the very low anode voltages the guys here have in the vast majority of their valve headphone amplifiers , the risks should be minimal. Anyway, if it is good enough to use Speaker protection PCBs with decent SS amplifiers, it shouldn't be too hard to use something similar with valve amplifiers. Alex If you are going to use a SS protection circuit, you might as well use a safe SS HA. I did blow up a pair of Klipschorns with an OTL amp 20 years ago. What a big bang that was. NEVER again. We could use the Mosfet stage from the Bravo G2 though.............
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