With the Superbowl over, let's talk about a *real* contact sport where players manage to play 80 consecutive minutes without a helmet, extensive padding, and needing to breath oxygen after each 10-yards run. (I know, cheap flame but I could not resist). The Six Nations tournament is starting...

Over in the ortho thread some of us have developed a real affection for the Yamaha house sound, which usually involves sweet mids and a warm, full sound. It was probably inevitable then that sooner or later one of us decided to investigate the current Yamaha lineup of dynamic phones. Kabeer...

I opened up an '80s Sony integrated amp I had lying around to fix a solder joint, and discovered the PS caps had leaked badly (the caps have been removed in the pic). So I ordered replacements and they got here today, but now I have no idea how to remove the crud. Are there any tricks, or...

[Possibly slightly off-topic] I had one of my two Alien DACs in my hands a few minutes ago, and I suddenly realized that it was one of the two the best buys I ever made since being on HF: cheap, sturdy, small, and with excellent sound for its price. I bought it from MASantos before starting...

I know it's probably OT (actually it would be nice to hear from similar dumb moments you had in DIY), but I need to share this. I got to work tonight on an old (1966) Grundig radio I bought as a present for my wife who loves them. I cleaned it up (it was in awful condition), replaced a...

I recently discovered a stash of NOS tubes from a store that used to repair radios and TVs in the 60s. Prompted by Donald (dBel84), I stopped by yesterday and picked up a few NOS PCC88 at a very decent price. From the huge box where they were kept I picked a few Philips, and a few from an...

Just wanted to share a few pics of a recable I just finished. I sold my iGrados a few months ago to Cappellano, another Italian headfier, and a couple of weeks ago he sent me a PM asking if I still had the PK3s fo sale as he stepped on the cable and broke the iGrados. I offered to recable them...

Over in the ortho thread, dBel84 kindly offered to guide me in attempting to repair my ageing NAD 3225PE, which went up in smoke a few years ago. I'm a total noob at DIY and have only modest soldering skills (but I'm reading “The Art of Electronics” so sometimes in the next decade I will have a...

I had enough of having some of my headphones laying around the desk, so I set about finding something that could be used as a headphones stand. And being in Italy, what did I find? A pasta drying rack... It's not exactly beautiful, but it's cheap and gets the job done while I gather the...

Ne abbiamo parlato per PM con antonyfirst qualche tempo fa, e sarebbe bello organizzare un mini-meet del nord italia. Se ci siete battete un colpo che iniziamo a pensarci seriamente...

I have never been a big believer in cables, but last week I recabled my AKG K171 with Mogami W2893 mini quad, and the improvement over the stock cable was definitely noticeable. I then started looking around for cable to be bought locally in order to recable some of my other headphones, as...

Back home tonight, I found a package waiting for me, which I knew contained a pair of silver K141 I bought a while ago on ebay pretty cheap. I was a bit surprised when I found them in their original box, complete with printed instructions and warranty card. And even more surprised when I checked...

I hope this is not against the policy, as I'm not selling anything or affiliated in any way with the sites in question. I spent some time today looking for used k501s after missing a used pair last night on ebay, then I thought that maybe there were a few shops still having some in stock. A...

I am looking for a closed phone to use while commuting/walking around, or at the office working on my computer. Sources will be (possibly using a Cmoy amp I have somewhere, but I would prefer not to use it) my D2, my Clix2 and the headphone port of a desktop or notebook. My budget is enough...