It's Ray Samuels. Everything he does is a work of industrial art.

Now I have to figure out if I should get my S/N 012 updated.

Glad to see that Ray is still building headphone amplifiers. My Emmeline HR2 is still going strong after more than 15 years. Ray is the epitome of an old world craftsman. A real credit to this great hobby.

He is a good salesman too With talking to him about upgrading my Apache, I ended up ordering an A-10 Thunderbolt II as my final destination.

thats a electrostatic tube amp right?

Yep!! I also am in the processing of buying a Stax SR-009S to go with it It is intended to be the end of looking for headphone nirvana or that is what Ray has sold me. He prefers it to his Sony R10s balanced out of his B52 and not by a small amount. I would also mentioned he had the HE-90s as the A10 has an output for them as well. As a result of being able to go back and forth comparing the HE90s and the SR-009, he felt they were very comparable and ended up selling his HE90s as the used market pricing for them is crazy.

excellent write up!

I received my completed Apache revision 4 update back today. I am in the process of letting it breaking. Like having a new amplifier again. I do agree with John's assessment of the Sparkos Labs S3601 compared to the OPA 1611 now being the standard for the Apache.

I just updated once again with new SPARKOS SS2590 x 4 installed - one word - wow!

Was this with your Thekk?

All my headphones I am testing but mainly my Kennerton GH50 JM Edition, my edition mod of GH50 and HD600 - but I seldom use it with the Kennerton Thekks, Kennerton Wodans, Kennerton Magni, Beyerdynamic, Etymotic, Master Dynamics and IEMs but I try to rotate and test all- but my favorite number one go to HP is always my closed back GH50 JM Edition

Thanks for the Sparkos Labs exploration. The SS2590s are definitely a great pairing with the Apache and this is just out of their static bags .