[JamieMcC]

Thanks for the encouragement guys.
I managed to get a few hours inthis morning and few again later this evening but lots of interruptions and tired eyes have brought progress to halt for today.
A early morning start on the heater section before the rest of the family is up seems a good idea for tomorrow.
 

 

[JamieMcC]

Well I am up and running and over the moon. I have been glued to it for most of the evening and envisage it being a late night.
 
Special thanks also to Lachlan, Skeptic and Paul for their encouragement and superb reviews of the Mainline and of coarse Doc and the Bottlehead team for doing such a great job again.
 
Much to my surprise all the resistance checks and voltage checks where bang on the money and the only thing that required redoing was I had fixed in one of the head outs with the locking release button facing forward and only noticed when it came to hooking up as the orientation did not match with the wiring instructions it only took a couple of minutes to re orientate and other than that it the build went like a dream with absolutely no problems what so ever.
 
Build time for hooking up ran around 16-18 hours in total in several sessions over three days. I am a bit dyslexic and I must have re-read each step at least four times or more and ohm'd out every resistor my illuminated magnifying glass also had a good work out.
 
There was a little head scratching at the end as I had two 100K  2W resistors and a one 1μF 50V capacitor left in the parts box but after a bit of searching through the manual and comparing with the parts list they turned out to be surplus phew!
 
Cheers

 guys
 

 

 

 

[Bwaze]

Eagerly awaiting comparison to stock and modded Crack and how the HD800 and T1 pair with both!

 

[Loquah]

It looks beautiful, Jamie!
 
Can't wait to read your impressions

 

[skeptic]

  Cheers

 guys
 

 
Cheers to you and congrats on your beautiful new amp!  Headphone audio really doesn't get any better to my ears than the mainline and hd800's

  Curiously, are you are going to put CF on the tube shields too/paint them or just leave them bare?   

 

[Doc B.]

I call this image 
 
Embarrassment of Riches
 

 

[Walderstorn]

You should be ashamed from putting up that image

 

[Doc B.]

Not ashamed at all. One pair is my own, one pair belongs to my friend Bob, and one pair is delegated to be offered with our new Neothoriator headphone amp. Serial numbers are in the 3000, 5000 and 10000 ranges. We listened on a couple of different amps and really couldn't hear any differences between them besides those that were created when the speakers were angled differently, except that the low serial # pair might have been ever so slightly more sensitive.

 

[Walderstorn]

2 bad one of them wasnt mine eheh

 

[NightFlight]

I'll post pics soon. I finally just got to pulling myself away from the the Mainline long enough to stain the box. That's what you get for doing things out of order.  Plus, it was really too cold up here to work in an unheated garage.. only just  a week ago it was still snowing.  

 

[JamieMcC]

  Eagerly awaiting comparison to stock and modded Crack and how the HD800 and T1 pair with both!

 
Even with a limited amount of listening its easy to say that Mainline Rules the roost. Saying that I do still have a soft spot for the hot rodded Crack GEC brown base and T1 they have great synergy together and are a very enjoyable combination but they do technically fall someway short of the Mainlines abilities. 
 

  It looks beautiful, Jamie!
 
Can't wait to read your impressions

 
Gosh where to start and how could I even add anything to yours Skeptics and Pauls impressions. I will think about it for the next week or two while its burning in.
 
 

   
Cheers to you and congrats on your beautiful new amp!  Headphone audio really doesn't get any better to my ears than the mainline and hd800's

  Curiously, are you are going to put CF on the tube shields too/paint them or just leave them bare?   

 
Thanks, with the shields I do have some carbon tube which I am hoping might fit in the workshop. If not they will get painted and the next time I do some carbon work will make something up if time allows.

 

[NightFlight]

Re Skeptics and Pauls impressions... I know... I think they said it all. I have a couple things to add, but... really.
 
Jamie, I assume I don't have say anything about turning your tube shields into thermal insulators. Ooops I just did. Black ones might be nice in my layout. Anyone know where to find them?

 

[JamieMcC]

  Re Skeptics and Pauls impressions... I know... I think they said it all. I have a couple things to add, but... really.
 
Jamie, I assume I don't have say anything about turning your tube shields into thermal insulators. Ooops I just did. Black ones might be nice in my layout. Anyone know where to find them?

 
Well I suspect paint will be the easiest option for the shields but I have been running without them yesterday and today and am quiet partial to seeing a little bit of glow of a evening Im not getting any RF interference or if I am I cant tell.
 
I will try and add a few impressions as well later. But for now will just mention the amp seems to be noticeably improving each time I come back to have listen and think I will let it run 24/7 for the next few days.

 

[Loquah]

   
Well I suspect paint will be the easiest option for the shields but I have been running without them yesterday and today and am quiet partial to seeing a little bit of glow of a evening Im not getting any RF interference or if I am I cant tell.
 
I will try and add a few impressions as well later. But for now will just mention the amp seems to be noticeably improving each time I come back to have listen and think I will let it run 24/7 for the next few days.

 
No, Jamie, that's just you falling in love...

 

[A2029]

   
Well I suspect paint will be the easiest option for the shields but I have been running without them yesterday and today and am quiet partial to seeing a little bit of glow of a evening Im not getting any RF interference or if I am I cant tell.

 
I'm in a pretty RF heavy environment, I wanted to make sure that there would be no high freq junk getting to my 6C45 tubes via pickup in wires (this may be a bit overkill):
 

 
 
 

 
P.S. those are ferrite cores under the shrink wrap, ferrite material types 43 and 61.