KGSS boards for sale? Alternative power cables?

I think you are in a lot of trouble.

The stuff with holes in it is called perfboard and yes you can do a kgss on perfboard.

That being said if you have never used perfboard before then doing a kgss (or any high voltage circuit) on it is asking for literally exploding components.

Do you perhaps mean power transformer?

The originally spec'd Victoria Magnetics toroidal transformer is no longer available (afaik) however there are lots of alternative places to get a similar unit.

I would get one from SumR / Richard Sumner in Canada.

There are fundamental elements that make an electrostatic "driver" a... well, an electrostatic driver.

There is some information here, a lot of info on diyaudio, and much more spread around the net.

Perhaps you should look at something a little smaller scale.

If you really want to pursue stats then get a cheap second hand pair of stax and build a small transformer box with a simple bias supply.

This is much harder to screw up and provides less of a chance of scaring your heart tissues.

It sounds like you don't know what you are doing, be careful and read read read read read would be my advice.

I'd use the blue hawaii power supply reconfigured for 350V if I were to build the kgss today.

Be careful when laying out the parts on the perfboard, nattonrice isn't joking here, high voltage loves to jump around all willy nilly, often resulting in exploding parts. It's a very real danger here when you need to poke about inside to measure and set the operating points.

Don't forget to budget for extra parts, as one mistake can very well send many parts to heaven. Keep in mind the heatsink requirements, and use proper insulating washers and insulating padsl on them that are rated for high voltage.

You could eradicate the power brick problem by having the appropriate secondaries (36Vac, CT) wound on the main transformer.

A simple 7815 / 7915 based supply like the Blue Hawaii one would then take care of that.

Indeed. A Blue Hawaii supply with the 100v zener switched for a 50v one would be best.

The 1968 can be swapped for a 1486 without too much trouble, just pay attention to the pin out.

Remember that the heat-sinks and power supply caps will add to your costs in a non-trivial way.

i'm not sure whether you realize you will have to set and adjust the operating point at high voltage with the case off, there is zero chance you will build it, case it up and have it operate without doing this, each transistor will have a different vgs/hfe etc within the tolerances of the part and the surrounding components will need to be adjusted to create the correct and matching bias. if you do not see the danger in poking around on a piece of perfboard with wiring a couple hundred volts above ground, then i dont know what else we can say. Exploding stuff is not the only sign that something is wrong, only one of the vore obvious ones. On perfboard, unless you are extremely organized it would be possible for live voltage to be present somewhere you do not expect it to be and a slipped probe could make it go all explody in your face

and yeah high voltage power supply caps are not cheap, cutting corners and not giving this design the respect it deserves is a recipe for disaster imo. we are placed in a difficult position here; it sounds to me like you are going to push ahead and do this and possibly quite callously. my recommendation would be for you to choose something a bit less ambitious/dangerous that more closely matches your level of experience

Have a poke around and look for the exstata, it's pretty simple. There are SS and tube versions I believe.

There's decent documentation as well, so perhaps it's the best option for you, especially considering it's a little cheaper and should suffice for testing some DIY stats.

It isn't without it's problems though, but I'm not going to go into it.

Ahh that's gonna be bloody difficult, prolly gotta play around with some transformer options or try and find a nice deal on an old school stax transformer box. You're going to need a speaker amp if you don't already have one.

So unless you're just doing this for the lols, I wouldn't bother.

It's best not to assume tubes=distortion. It's all about the application of the tube in the circuit design.

For instance, the KGSS (which is solid-state) and it's THD is less than 0.008%, whereas the Blue Hawaii has tubes in it and it's THD is less than 0.004%!

I'd just build or buy whatever cheapest amp I could and just get cracking building the headphone, I think you can agree that changes in the headphone will make the most difference sonically anyway.

Both are ruler flat by the way.

Good luck, it should be heaps fun building and tweaking the headphones to get the perfect sound you're after.

Tube amps can be made to sound "tubey" and they can be made to sound like nothing at all, it depends on the topology of the amp and what goals the designer has set.

If you are concerned about thd then for memory the exstata's is orders of magnitude higher than the kgss.

As I said before the easiest and quickest way to get up and running would be to build a small transformer box and a simple bias supply.

This would be less than 10 components and as long as you wire things in the right place, next to impossible to blow up.

It also has the advantage of being cheap.

You then connect this box to what ever amp you use to drive your speakers and voila~  a stax amp.

Believe it or not Kevin Gilmore's AC coupled all-triode direct drive amp (i.e. the Woo Audio GES / WES) would probably be easier to build compared to the kgss on perfboard.

It sounds very good to boot.