Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this as i keep blowing the arse out of the voltage regulators. PupDAC has worked perfectly for years, until recently when i got a second hand Schiit Vali headphone amp, the original model with two sub miniature 6088 tubes. The unit is powered with a 15v AC...

Change the alert-tone to a cha-ching sound, you will sleep much better :) I had to skip this sale, think its the first October in years i haven't bought a Bottlehead kit for my Birthday.

They also come in 250v which would be easier to package into a Crack chassis. https://solen.ca/products/capacitors/fast-capacitors-250v-pa-series-metallized-polypropylene/solen-pa10000/

Nah, better to put the money towards the speedball upgrade, capacitor upgrade, or a nice set of tubes.

I bought a DAC3 a while ago and really like it.  It may not be the last word in resolution and pinpoint accuracy, but what it does have in spades is musicality.  No regrets buying mine at all..

I tried the MBM as coupling caps and they did'nt last long either.  They have a sparkly sound which caught my interest initially, but they are somewhat flawed.   Jupiters are my favorite caps of any brand, they just sound the most natural to me. The older square HT flat stack especially.

What he said...   Crackatwoa was not a S.E.X. replacement, it is intended to give hard core Crack modders a better platform to modify.   S.E.X. was a speaker amplifier first, headphone amplifier second.  Personally i would still take one over a Crackatwoa as its a great little amplifier.  ...

Here is an interesting tube for you collectors out there.   I have a few Gold Aero tubes in 6CG7 and 6DJ8 form and they all test with amazingly high emissions and perfectly matched sections. From what i was able to find out they cherry picked the best tubes they could find from a variety of...

Its pretty pointless to try and evaluate different tubes without correctly biasing them, especially with these tubes as the variance can be huge between them.

If its a natural carnauba based wax it should work just fine. A coat of Collinite lasts about six months on my car so it should last a few years on a crack

I have built half a dozen that way on Jamies advice and they all looked fantastic with a silky smooth finish. Also far easier to apply than a clear coat.

Never seen that before, but now that you say it i have a Mullard 6080 rolling around my desk with one dead channel, wonder if it can be resuscitated too.  One side measures really strong, but the other has zero output, zip, nada.

  Don't like the sound of that, how were you powering your laptop?   I use mine with a cheap DC-AC inverter powering the stock laptop power supply and never had a problem, but you have me worried now...

Here is some info i posted on the Bottlehead forum which may be of interest to you Mainliners..      

If you only have one nut just add a few washers on the bottom side to fill the gap.  In some cases where the shaft is still too long (Alps Blue) you just have to shorten it.

Larger capacitance can reduce the ripple level by smoothing out the 50 or 60hz mains frequency of the power supply, which translates into less audible hum. A stock crack does a perfectly acceptable job of this so adding more capacitance isn't really going to do anything for you. If anything it...

  What are the tubes on the front row, are they naked C3Gs?

  That would be a real shame as its a great kit. Have you looked into availability of the 6FJ7 tubes as it would only require a socket change for the compactron base.

They are a replacement tube socket, so you would have to unsolder the old socket, then resolder all the connections onto the new socket.  The two LED's would make it a fiddly job on a crack.   Another alternative is a slip on shield e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/361225703724

You are one step away from wearing a tinfoil hat   Seriously though, fit one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390293225944

No, they didnt seem any different to me. I use my iron at 450c with Cardas Silver Solder.

There are a few sources for those connectors if you google "HD800 plugs" so you could just cut them off and replace.

Fancy an XLR balanced cable for the HD800 without spending €300 for Sennheisers?  Cheap skate recipe is as follows requiring about €10 worth of parts, a brave pill, and a little soldering skill. Parts needed are,   Neutrik NC4FXX-B Female four pin XLR ...

Interesting tidbit there about the AJ0 and AJ1, only ever seen the 1's myself.   Personally i would always give preference to CV stamped tubes as i believe they would have undergone more stringent testing. Datasheet for the CV2984 http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/cv2984.pdf

Just to chuck a spanner in the works, those figures might not be a ma figure at all, do we know what they used to test the tubes?   Ex military TV series tube testers, and Hickok testers use there own arbitrary scale, which can be converted into micromhos.  For example with my TV-7 tester a...