Heres the amp I use to drive my Electro Voices.  Its a 6B4G SE with a 6SL7 driver, and a 6AX5 rectifier.  The 6B4G is essentially a 6.3V 2A3 in an octal socket, they sound very close.  I built this one a couple years ago, and its been my main amp since.  Usually, I rotate amps a couple of times...

My coaxial EV 12TRXBs the day I brought them home.  I searched for cabinets for a good month.   Now I have them in 6cu ft Barzilay cabinets, powered by a 6B4G SET with a benchmark DAC1 as the source.  SET + high efficiency coaxial point source driver = heaven :)

Build yourself a 2A3 SET and a pair of single-driver speakers...all the lovely mods you could ever want :).

Quote: Some people feel that a crossover filters out some of the goodness coming down the chain.  Not only that, but with no crossover, it makes the speakers easier to drive, because power from the amp doesnt get dissipated as heat.  This can be important if youre running low wattage tube...

I have this card in my Linux music server, and cannot adjust the volume through alsamixer...it behaves more like a line-level output instead of me being able to control the volume.  I recently purchased the card from the eBay distributor, Gyrocom.  When I run lspci...I get "03:00.0 Multimedia...

  Quote: Very well said!  Most of us here dont fit the income level to afford such systems, but we make do with what we have.  I say, if somebody is making that kind of money, let them enjoy it, they worked for it and should enjoy the fruits of their labor, any way they see fit.

Quote: Those are whizzer cones...basically the "tweeter"of a full-range driver.  Mine are 8" Fostex FE207Es, the whizzer really helps with the higher frequency extension.  These dont go very high...Id say they run out of steam about 16KHz...but thats fine by me, as my hearing runs out...

This is my main rig, powered by a 3W 6B4G SET that I built about a year ago.  The 6B4G is basically a 6.3V 2A3 with an octal base, as opposed to the 4-pin on the 2A3.  They both sound pretty much the same, but I feel the 6B4G has a tad more grunt on the low end.  The rectifier is a solid state...

Why are speakers part of the DBT-free section of this forum?  Every other site I regularly visit keeps the speaker forum separate from the cables/tweaks/DBT-free forum for obvious reasons.  I know this is a headphone site, but really, why are speakers part of DBT-free when they should in reality...

Who not roll your own?  Mark Audio CHR-70s available from Madisound for $37 each, paired with the Dayton .25 cu ft cabs at Parts Express for $95 per pair.  Use a 1.5" x 4" port tube, and youll have a 4" full range driver that goes from 45Hz to 20KHz in that small enclosure.   The cabs come...

Id have to go with Tekton Design 8.1/6.5En/4.5OB, Seas Loki's, Zaph Audio SR71s, Seas Idunn's, or Dynaco A25's (new reproduction units are over $1000, but vintage used ones can be had for as little as $25 per pair, only difference is the tweeter).  Id really look for a pair of vintage...

Quote: Have a look at the other Tekton speakers.  Eric will custom make you anything you want.  He has some nice 2-way models that just might be what youre looking for.  hes a very good guy to deal with.  Ask him what he would recommend for metal.  Tekton Design has a 30-day return...

Quote: I havent found them too good for metal.  At lower volumes, theyll handle metal nicely, but we know metal is meant to be played loud.  Larger full range drivers have a tendency to beam under high cone excursion.  I listen to alot of psytrance, ambient psychedelica, classic rock, and...

I dunno if its a good price, but I do know you can buy them new from Klipsch for $5, and they look exactly like the vintage one.   http://www.klipsch.com/na-en/products/bs-lapel-button-overview/

If you can find one, look into a Fisher 500/800C.  Theyre one of the best tube receivers made...they put out about 30WPC, which is plenty enough to drive the speakers listed above.  Even if you find one cheap that needs work, Craig over at NOS Valves will rebuild it for you in better than new...

Quote: Many of the Monoprice cables I have dont have hardly any bite at all.  If you move the gear a bit, the cable pops off.  Of course some are better than others, but Ive had more duds than good ones. 

I just get whatever is available at the drug store.  My wife makes fun of me for wearing earplugs to concerts, we will see who has the last laugh 40 years down the road LOL. 

Quote: Eric has plenty of options available, you can call or email him.  He can add a notch filter or a BSC filter to the speaker to tame the peak.  They dont get shouty on all music, but with either filter in place, there shouldnt be any.  The BSC filter will flatten the whole frequency...

Quote: I own a pair of Tekton 8.1s.  If there is any speaker that sounds like Grados, its Tektons.  They have all of the characteristics the OP mentioned.  You can get the Tekton Design 4.5s in basic black for $300.  Yeah, they tend to shout every once in awhile, but everything else is...

Refoaming isnt that hard to do.  Very intimidating, but actually a pretty easy job.  The hard part is getting the old foam off.  The good refoam kits come with shims for the voice coil.  If the kit you buy doesnt have shims, you can make your own out of business cards.  The easiest way to remove...

I was never a big believer in cables myself, although I dont use cheap garbage cables.  I make my own from Canare Star Quad terminated with Switchcraft plugs.  A 3ft pair of interconnects costs me ~$8 to assemble.  I used to use Monoprice cables previously, but developed a severe dislike of them...

    ....and my amp.  I rearranged my area last weekend and put my TV on top of my rack.     EDIT:  Why do we have to jump through hoops and click on a bunch of stuff to post pics now?  It was MUCH easier just adding the [img] at either end and hitting CTRL + V to get it done. 

Im a speaker guy myself.  The only time I use headphones is really late at night when people are sleeping, but even then Ill usually use speakers at low volume.  Im running Tekton Design 8.1s off of a 6B4G SET amplifier.

This past Wednesday my Tekton 8.1s arrived.  Theyre pretty darn big for bookshelf speakers, using an 8" Fostex FE207E.  The next thing that got me was how well constructed the cabinets were.  There are no sharp edges, everything is smooth and rounded off.  The cabinets seem to be of much higher...

I should have mine come Wednesday, but probably wont be able to post my impressions until Thursday.  I arced a rectifier tube in my SET, so Im waiting on a replacement before I give the Tektons a run.