HeadAmp Blue Hawaii

Justin no longer build the HeadAmp Blue Hawaii.
But since late last year he have been developing a HeadAmp Blue Hawaii Special Edition, which will be produced i 10 units only and expected to sell for ~$4-5000. More info here.

When in production I think the HeadAmp Blue Hawaii sold for $2500.

The Blue Hawaii sold for 2500$ stock but there were a few options available. It should be easy to throw one to together if you have the plates made and order the transformer from Victoria Magnetics. It's not a beginners project but a little experience and common sense will carry you a long way.

With justin's previous amplifier the aristaeus i was absolutely the last
person to get mine. That was not going to happen this time. That
and my machine shop is way faster than justins.

I want to make it clear that this is 100% the work of justin wilson, i'm
just along for the ride. In the pictures below, the circuit boards are
the 100% ready production boards, and the rest of the machining is
me and my Fadal 4000. This is my personally owned and paid for
unit. (the kgbh-se that is, a fadal won't fit in my garage)

And yes, the thing is seriously sweet with a number of enhancements.

Warning as usual all pictures are king size.


http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22719.jpg
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22722.jpg
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22727.jpg

the top and bottom panels courtesy the fadal.
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22729.jpg
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22730.jpg

the top and bottom bars also courtesy the fadal.
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/bars.jpg


in listenable condition...
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22761.jpg
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22762.jpg
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22763.jpg
http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/g9f22764.jpg

I should have front and back panels this week sometime.

Of course i really want the professionally finished stuff
from justin when it is ready, but immediate gratification
is just not fast enough anymore. You know i'm pretty
desperate when i machine my own chassis.

Yesð I meant PCB's. I'm so used to talk about PCB's in the context of stators I keep calling them plates. The cost can get out of hand but odds are you will use better materials so it will be money well spent.

The amp looks really nice but all that signal routing through the PCB brings back nasty flashbacks from some 70's designs but wire has it's own problems too. The important question is how does it sound?

So are you working on any DHT based designs for the SR-007? Those EL34's simply aren't big enough.

It sounds absolutely wonderful. Dead quiet too. I'm going to have to build
at least one more.

I certainly know how to do a DHT based electrostatic amp. I even know
how to do a grounded grid version. The amount of additional iron necessary
to pull that off however requires a power supply that would be absolutely
gigantic. Or high frequency switchers for the fully isolated filament voltages
which i really don't want to do. Or car batteries, which i also don't want
to do.

I will say this version looks a bit simpler to build, though the psu looks a bit more complex... and, with less heat? Kudos for getting rid of the massive banks of the 2sa1968, which were the biggest pain to fab sinks & mount.

My BH (only possible by the gracious help of both Dr Gilmore AND Justin) cost me roughly $1800 in parts, including about $400 for attenuators. It is not a go-it-alone type project, IMHO.

BTW, anyone know how many BH exist, in whatever form?

Looks nice so far!
I am desperately waiting for some pictures of the end product before I decide if the Blue Hawaii Special Edition is the right one for me. It need to have the same professional, well machined, look as the Aristaeus for me to bite on it.

Can't wait!

You can always use another Blue Hawaii

I find that the SR-007 needs an even more powerful amp then the BH so DHT's are the best way forward. Massive Japanese iron for the PSU is a necessity and massive film caps to compliment them. I'm going to throw something together to see if this is indeed the way to go. I've pretty much decided to use 845's for output duty as they are cheap and sound great. Everything else is hard as the drivers need to be massive so something like a SV572 would do the job but they are out of production and the prices are climbing. Still much cheaper then a 300b. I will probably have a single ended input stage with a transformer doing the phase splitting for the push pull output stage. I really want to try a transformer coupled amp for some insane reason.

The old version gets pretty warm but that's a good thing up here in the frozen north. The delay on the HV line is a good move as the Chinese tubes don't last long in the old version. The Valve Arts you shipped with my amp were starting to show signs of wear after about a month but the Mullard XF2's are still perfect after 3 years.

There are no plans for a tube rectified PSU for the Blue Hawaii? That is pretty high on my to-do list after building a 845 based amp. It would definitely add a
different tone to the sound and the small caps make it even faster.

Btw. It's pretty cool that my amp is one of 12 made. How many were silver?

EL34's can still be found dirt cheap, I've bought quite a few quads of Mullard XF2's for under 200$ each and you can't do much better. The new stuff is much cheaper. The difference in tubes is huge and it's hard to stop using the Mullards after you've heard what they do.