Headamp Blue Hawaii Special Edition
- Thread starter audiosceptic
- Start date
wink
His amps are made out of recycled beer cans
and his source from tomatos.
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2009
- Posts
- 20,311
- Likes
- 3,655
^ Sound advice......
preproman
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
- Posts
- 10,625
- Likes
- 774
Ali-Pacha
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2013
- Posts
- 1,026
- Likes
- 500
You really do want me to buy a totaldac ? You bunch of evil tempters
Ali
Ali
preproman
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
- Posts
- 10,625
- Likes
- 774
You really do want me to buy a totaldac ? You bunch of evil tempters
Ali
Lets go Ali - make it happen..
NoPants
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2006
- Posts
- 1,003
- Likes
- 94
You really do want me to buy a totaldac ? You bunch of evil tempters
Ali
For the totaldac price there are a lot of other interesting options, maybe used DCS
goobicii
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2013
- Posts
- 347
- Likes
- 31
If I was to spend more than 200 dollars theres no way in hell I would buy a stupid sigma delta that doesnt even play real music but ****ty unaccurate immitation of original signal,I would even rather have a mediocore 30 year old TDA1541 dac that even priciest of S/D dacs
R2R NOS ftw!!!
NoPants
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2006
- Posts
- 1,003
- Likes
- 94
I don't even know what to make of that statement
Anyways, the DCS ring DACs are interesting if you look some of the ideas and performance gains. I think there's some other DACs which try approahces with similar, like the metrum pavane.
But there's always the measurement graphs on the totaldac site which show the utterly amazing -100 dbfs performance, clearly it's the best choice
Congratulations on the blue hawaii that people are receiving, I really enjoyed the short time I spent with mine. I might end up finishing my T2 before I get around to finishing the 2 BH's I have on the bench though. More for the marketplace I guess
Anyways, the DCS ring DACs are interesting if you look some of the ideas and performance gains. I think there's some other DACs which try approahces with similar, like the metrum pavane.
But there's always the measurement graphs on the totaldac site which show the utterly amazing -100 dbfs performance, clearly it's the best choice
Congratulations on the blue hawaii that people are receiving, I really enjoyed the short time I spent with mine. I might end up finishing my T2 before I get around to finishing the 2 BH's I have on the bench though. More for the marketplace I guess
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2002
- Posts
- 2,994
- Likes
- 1,491
Drama queen - Part II...
So, you would think I spent the last week making myself deaf by listening to the newly arrived BHSE.
That was the plan except that my BHSE suddenly stopped working after a couple of days for no reason (well there's always a reason though).
What?! What is this?! I can hear a very faint sound when I push the volume to 11AM, something went awfully wrong there.
As usual, I fire off an email to Justin and I get a response within 8 minutes [I don't recall ranting too much about Justin's lack of responses to email sollicitations but if I did, I take it all back: the man just sorts through the non-sense and be assured that he's on it when the case justifies it].
And there starts a journey of diagnosing what is wrong with my amp, thousands of miles apart. Very soon, Justin finds out the phones are not getting biais voltage they need to operate, hence the whispering operation mode.
Since I was using PSVANE EL34PH, with their dreadful reputation, I soon wondered if this was because of the tubes. Popped in some Mullard XF2s OO getter, same result...
Testing the voltage across the stators when playing pure tone, everything was absolutely fine except the bias line which is quite isolated from the rest. We started to measure the cord, voltages at the PSU end, voltages at the umbilical cord end on the amp side, everything was fine.
Conclusion: problem on the bias line, inside the amp, I need to take the top cover off. Gosh, I don't want to scratch these screws, the thing is spotless! No choice. With me, that was already a challenge in itself as I could not resolve myself to force the screw driver into the first vice (the anodizing / painting make it a very tight fit). A couple of wrong screwdrivers ordered later and clarification, I finally managed take the 12screws off [for reference, size is 5/64" or .0781, close to 2mm metric].
Here's a topview, we can't see much as most components are soldered on the other side but we can already tell the thing looks almost absolutely symmetric and is all very neat:
Looking at this, all seem fine so I start measuring voltages and resistance across various pins. With a certified EE moron like myself, that took a bit of courage to get to do this, especially unit on:
Unfortunately, no different results from before. By that stage, I was a bit desperate, already looking into shipping fees back to / from Headamp. Justin did not give up there and proposed me to perform additional diagnosis, taking the bottom panel off next...
I wake up at 5AM to get to do this before the kids wake up / work, 24 screws later this is what I see, this thing is just as clean / awesome looking from the inside as it is from the inside, admire Justin's work here:
The bias line runs on the very right side of the board. From the back, through a couple of capacitors / resistors to the headphone jacks (with 5.1M ballast resistors). Soon enough just asks me for additional close up pics of resistor R28 (between the 2 rectangular red color capacitors). This is what I get:
We can see a very tiny piece is junk on the left solder joint, it's actually barely visible by eyesight, I used the iphone camera for this.
This turned out to be a very very tiny piece of metal that was shorting to ground. The thing is maybe 0.25mm this and 1mm long that tiny! No idea how this got there, how in hell it started to become conducted after several hours of use. But the matter of fact is that once I took it off with those hair removal thingies, the amp started to measure just fine. Put a little bit of nail polish there just in case, reassembled the panels back and we were back in business. I have been using it a bit since, it's been rock stable.
Moral of the story for me: Justin really know what he's doing, he's extremely serious and responsive when it matters and makes f..ng beautiful amps both on the inside and outside.
Second moral of the story: these high voltage amps are very serious business. 600V floating here and there means you don't need much at all to create shorts. I would love to build myself a T2 someday but I realise this is wishful thinking when I see the above. Maybe start with a bottlehead crack for my HD600 first
.
The diagnostic process was quite an enriching experience in itself and, while scary at first, it saved a good chunk of money and hassle for me and Justin [ you guys waiting for your BHSE can thank me ]. Justin was telling me there's a good chance this piece of metal would have fallen off during shipping back to him, he would have found nothing wrong with the amp, he and I would have been pissed at wasting such time and money... Oh am I glad about this current happy ending.
Ok, enough drama, hope some of you enjoyed the read
cheers,
arnaud
So, you would think I spent the last week making myself deaf by listening to the newly arrived BHSE.
That was the plan except that my BHSE suddenly stopped working after a couple of days for no reason (well there's always a reason though).
What?! What is this?! I can hear a very faint sound when I push the volume to 11AM, something went awfully wrong there.
As usual, I fire off an email to Justin and I get a response within 8 minutes [I don't recall ranting too much about Justin's lack of responses to email sollicitations but if I did, I take it all back: the man just sorts through the non-sense and be assured that he's on it when the case justifies it].
And there starts a journey of diagnosing what is wrong with my amp, thousands of miles apart. Very soon, Justin finds out the phones are not getting biais voltage they need to operate, hence the whispering operation mode.
Since I was using PSVANE EL34PH, with their dreadful reputation, I soon wondered if this was because of the tubes. Popped in some Mullard XF2s OO getter, same result...
Testing the voltage across the stators when playing pure tone, everything was absolutely fine except the bias line which is quite isolated from the rest. We started to measure the cord, voltages at the PSU end, voltages at the umbilical cord end on the amp side, everything was fine.
Conclusion: problem on the bias line, inside the amp, I need to take the top cover off. Gosh, I don't want to scratch these screws, the thing is spotless! No choice. With me, that was already a challenge in itself as I could not resolve myself to force the screw driver into the first vice (the anodizing / painting make it a very tight fit). A couple of wrong screwdrivers ordered later and clarification, I finally managed take the 12screws off [for reference, size is 5/64" or .0781, close to 2mm metric].
Here's a topview, we can't see much as most components are soldered on the other side but we can already tell the thing looks almost absolutely symmetric and is all very neat:
Looking at this, all seem fine so I start measuring voltages and resistance across various pins. With a certified EE moron like myself, that took a bit of courage to get to do this, especially unit on:
Unfortunately, no different results from before. By that stage, I was a bit desperate, already looking into shipping fees back to / from Headamp. Justin did not give up there and proposed me to perform additional diagnosis, taking the bottom panel off next...
I wake up at 5AM to get to do this before the kids wake up / work, 24 screws later this is what I see, this thing is just as clean / awesome looking from the inside as it is from the inside, admire Justin's work here:
The bias line runs on the very right side of the board. From the back, through a couple of capacitors / resistors to the headphone jacks (with 5.1M ballast resistors). Soon enough just asks me for additional close up pics of resistor R28 (between the 2 rectangular red color capacitors). This is what I get:
We can see a very tiny piece is junk on the left solder joint, it's actually barely visible by eyesight, I used the iphone camera for this.
This turned out to be a very very tiny piece of metal that was shorting to ground. The thing is maybe 0.25mm this and 1mm long that tiny! No idea how this got there, how in hell it started to become conducted after several hours of use. But the matter of fact is that once I took it off with those hair removal thingies, the amp started to measure just fine. Put a little bit of nail polish there just in case, reassembled the panels back and we were back in business. I have been using it a bit since, it's been rock stable.
Moral of the story for me: Justin really know what he's doing, he's extremely serious and responsive when it matters and makes f..ng beautiful amps both on the inside and outside.
Second moral of the story: these high voltage amps are very serious business. 600V floating here and there means you don't need much at all to create shorts. I would love to build myself a T2 someday but I realise this is wishful thinking when I see the above. Maybe start with a bottlehead crack for my HD600 first
.The diagnostic process was quite an enriching experience in itself and, while scary at first, it saved a good chunk of money and hassle for me and Justin [ you guys waiting for your BHSE can thank me
]. Justin was telling me there's a good chance this piece of metal would have fallen off during shipping back to him, he would have found nothing wrong with the amp, he and I would have been pissed at wasting such time and money... Oh am I glad about this current happy ending.Ok, enough drama, hope some of you enjoyed the read
cheers,
arnaud
Here's to hoping I don't have to do any repairs myself, although the engineer in me would probably get a kick out of it 
David1961
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2010
- Posts
- 2,023
- Likes
- 88
@ Arnaud,
It's good to know you got the problem sorted.
It's good to know you got the problem sorted.
Thank you for those lovely photo's arnaud. The care and attention that goes into every amp is amazing a thing of beauty in my opinion. As beautiful the BHSE is on the outside (and i have yet to see photo that truly captures this) in a way i actually find the innards even more stunning. Components are all placed with such precision and all joints soldered properly. The attention to detail is STAGGERING! There are probably more than a few companies out there that could only dream of producing something as awesome as this.
Justin Wilson REALLY knows his stuff and i myself look forward to receiving my BHSE one day.
Congratulations arnaud i am sure she will give you many years of listening pleasure.
Justin Wilson REALLY knows his stuff and i myself look forward to receiving my BHSE one day.
Congratulations arnaud i am sure she will give you many years of listening pleasure.
preproman
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
- Posts
- 10,625
- Likes
- 774
Users who are viewing this thread
