The Stax thread (New) - Page 39

Blue Hawaii drives my HE60 pretty dang well, especially in the bass region, even with relatively cheap JJ el34.

There is always personal choice but I doubt many of the He90 owners have spent years building a setup around the O2's because they will automatically think they are inferior. Why shouldn't they be since they cost 1/5 of the He90. I did love the He90's the first two weeks I had them but when I started a direct comparison I heard how flawed they are. This superior performance is nowhere to be found and even when I cripple the SR-007 with a bad amp they still manage to sound better with every thing I throw at them. If someone that owns both phones and has spent large amounts of time building around both of them favors the He90 I will be happy for him, but you can't gauge the SR-007 ability in a short audition. It takes months to fully learn about them.

My main annoyance now is the bad engineering that was put into them. The fact the when you push them towards the ear the mylar sticks to the stator screams that they didn't know what they were doing. It's almost if Sennheiser opened up the textbook and saw the minimum recommended D/S gap and said thats fine! Stax is at 60% off the recommended maximum with the Pro bias and 40% with the Normal units. Some how people have accepted it as ok that no two pairs sound the same but to me it is unacceptable. It is very hard to make electrostatic driver correctly the first time, let alone mass produce them but many companies smaller then Sennheiser have pulled this off in the past. To my ears, when it is working the Beyer ET1000 does more things right then the He90. Sure they are over 30 years old but they sound great out of a Stax amp.

I think this will be my last post about this issue. I'm getting a bit tired of having to explain my opinions over and over again just because there are a lot of people here that will not accept that the SR-007 may indeed be better then either the He90 or the Omega 1. If you like some impressions on this matter read the Headwize archives. There was quite lot of discussion about this very issue there and it is a great read. Its written by very knowledgeable people and they come to the same conclusions about the He90 as I did.

I don't doubt you for a second. It is a great amp and if you want to do much better it will be very expensive.

Btw. Try the "Winged C" tubes if you don't want to spring for the NOS stuff. They are very good.

[QUOTE=jirams;2775591] Those new high capacity NiMh batts are great! The thing about 4.5V vs. 3.0V is this: the 3.0 V sound the same, AS LONG AS the full charge that's built up by being hooked to full power (4.5V) lasts. Once that charge leaks away, the 3V sound like dog doo. I just run them off 4.5V, and don't worry about losing charge, but some people hit 'em with a wall wart at full charge, then take them out with them using the internal 3V batts just fine.

1. Does anyone know and is anyone able to characterize the difference I could expect between an SR-3 (new) and an SR-5 (non-gold)? They seem to be going dirt cheap out here, paired with SRD-5 or 6.

2. Ditto the last question, but between SR-5 gold and SR-X mkIII, with SRD-6 or 7, and change dirt cheap to rather cheap.

3. finally, would it be foolish of me to take option 1 instead of option 2, if the difference was only ca. 40-50 euros? I've been kicking myself since I passed on an excellent condition SR-X/SRD-7 for 100 euros, but just can't seem to find a good pair of SR-X since then, but the 3 and 5 are cropping up like weeds.

1. Yes, but what then is the difference between the 3 and the 5? Are the drivers different? The housing is so similar. And where does the 3N fit in? I've been scouring the search function on this to no avail. And a 5 gold has a different diaphragm thickness from the 5, but does that also go for the 5N?

it's funny, I never see any alpha/gamma for sale in Germany. Maybe they weren't marketed here. There are always a few pair of the older Stax on ebay.de, and a few pair of lambas, but I've yet to see a gamma.

Aha, this is the info I was looking for, on the drivers. Many thanks. I'm surprised to hear you say this about the Gammas, though. I've been watching closely for only about two months, but I remember seeing only a couple of pairs come up in all that time. The threes and fives, on the other hand-- there are a half-dozen listed even now.

Woo GES Amp will be at the National Meet in San Jose

I've asked Jack Wu to display the GES electrostat amp that he is building for me, at the upcoming National Meet. It's designed to drive HE90 and Stax headphones, and I hope that some of the meet attendees will locate and connect an HE90 headphone to it. Since I'm unable to attend this meet, and since I won't receive the amp for the first time until after the meet, I really look forward to others' comments regarding its performance.

The SR-3 New used a thinner diaphragm then the SR-3 but both of these phones don't use a normal bias but the original 200v standard. The drivers are different between the 3 and 5 and the arc assembly can be altered on the 3's but it is fixed on the 5. I have both the SR-3 New and a SR-5 here in good condition and I would take the SR-5 over the older models any time. It's more extended with better timbre and harmonics. The Lambdas are much better in any way but these phones can be had for under 50€.

Agreed. It's worth noting, though, that the SR-3 takes us all the way back to 1969. It's a safe assumption that the driver in my Radio Shack HP-100 has an SR-3 driver in it, and though the 'phone is very pleasant and would've run roughshod over just about any other headphone from 1969 with shod left over, the diaphragms are tiny compared to modern 'stats' 'frams, so you know power handling and bass output are going to be limited. Still, I think the HP-100 sounds very warm and mellow for a 'stat. Even so, buy 'em only if cheap-- shoot for $40 or less for an SR-3 and its SRD-5 box. The HP-100 can be had for even less.

I have the Magnavox stats that are essentially the same as the HP-100 and the drivers are similar but not the same. The same goes for the Suprex phones from the same era but they weren't made by Stax. Stax made a lot of OEM phones and some companies ripped off the design of sticking the diaphragm to a metal ring and then suspending it between two plastic edges that are integrated to the stator housing.

I find the Magnavox set to be truly horrible sounding and there is a good reason for it. The driver is only loosely fitted with some foam and not pressed into place with rubber grommets like on the SR-3. It's a very neat trick so Stax wouldn't hurt their own sales...

After all the advice here, I've revised my original plan of waiting to pounce on a cheap SR-X into a plan of waiting to pounce on an SR-X or an SR-5 gold. Which at least does double the prospects, what?

Hi. I have an SRD-7/SR-XMk.3 that I got in '78. Believe it or not, it's been powered up virtually continuously ever since, at least polarised. That's what I was told to do, hope it was good advice! Is there anything I can test for to see if there has been electrical deterioration? Everything looks fine to the casual eye, and obviously my ears aren't what they were when I was ~20, but the sound seems fine i.e. no rattling/vibration/scratchiness/etc. Thanks.