[MilesDavis2]

Quote:

If I buy a Crack, I would have to spend around $500 on it. I am not brave enough to build it myself.
 
I am concerned over whether it is still a good value if I spend that much on it.
 
There are possibly some other tube amps for $500 that might be better, right?
 

The $500 would include the speedball upgrade.  I was going that route until I found the crack on audiogon for cost.  Just lucked out. I was ready to order from bottlehead complete with the upgrades and assembly.  Even at $500, believe me...its still is good value.
 
 

 

[captouch]

Quote:

If I buy a Crack, I would have to spend around $500 on it. I am not brave enough to build it myself.
 
I am concerned over whether it is still a good value if I spend that much on it.
 
There are possibly some other tube amps for $500 that might be better, right?
 

 
The kit itself sounds very nice stock and is normally $219 + shipping w/o Speedball upgrade.  I didn't see this mentioned here, but Bottlehead is giving a automatic 5% discount for Crack + Speedball orders through Sunday, and IF enough people (only 6 more at this point) order by Sunday night, they're giving other 10% off for a total of 15% off (so $270 + shipping instead of $318 + shipping).  If anyone is thinking about this amp for their high impedance cans, I'd jump on this deal.
 
I built it myself over the course of 1 day (off and on - took breaks, went out with family for lunch and shopping).  I had very, very little soldering/DIY experience.  I watched a couple of soldering videos on YouTube (which made me realize I'd been doing it wrong in the past).  But I got everything right the first time by taking it slow and checking connection integrity after virtually every soldering step to make sure I made a good solder joint (I really didn't want to debug later).  It probably took me 8hrs of actual labor, taking it slow.  This doesn't include painting the top or staining the bottom (which I haven't done yet).  But it was mostly enjoyable (I was tired near the end of the day and pushed myself to finish, but that was my impatience to wrap it up before the workweek started).
 
The hardest part for me was sometimes you had 3 connections going through one point.  In a couple of cases, I "attached and soldered" when I should have just "attached" and soldered later when the other wires were in place (my bad for not noticing this in the instructions).  And the heat travels fast from the iron along the lead to the component, so I was always a bit worried about leaving the iron there too long and frying a component - but it all turned out fine.  Also, there was one case where the full length of the resistor provided was too short to span the connection points, requiring that I bend the connection points closer to enable the resistor to be connected - that was a bit of a pain, but I made due.
 
Point is, I was also pretty hesitant to build it, but if you get the right tools (iron, wire stripper, needle nose pliers, etc), it's not so bad.  It does take awhile, but overall not too difficult even for a beginner like me.
 
 

 

[MrDavis]

Indeed. Very easy to build.  Just take your time and follow the excellent instructions.  
 
 

 

[sennheiserhd485]

Quote:

 
The kit itself sounds very nice stock and is normally $219 + shipping w/o Speedball upgrade.  I didn't see this mentioned here, but Bottlehead is giving a automatic 5% discount for Crack + Speedball orders through Sunday, and IF enough people (only 6 more at this point) order by Sunday night, they're giving other 10% off for a total of 15% off (so $270 + shipping instead of $318 + shipping).  If anyone is thinking about this amp for their high impedance cans, I'd jump on this deal.
 
I built it myself over the course of 1 day (off and on - took breaks, went out with family for lunch and shopping).  I had very, very little soldering/DIY experience.  I watched a couple of soldering videos on YouTube (which made me realize I'd been doing it wrong in the past).  But I got everything right the first time by taking it slow and checking connection integrity after virtually every soldering step to make sure I made a good solder joint (I really didn't want to debug later).  It probably took me 8hrs of actual labor, taking it slow.  This doesn't include painting the top or staining the bottom (which I haven't done yet).  But it was mostly enjoyable (I was tired near the end of the day and pushed myself to finish, but that was my impatience to wrap it up before the workweek started).
 
The hardest part for me was sometimes you had 3 connections going through one point.  In a couple of cases, I "attached and soldered" when I should have just "attached" and soldered later when the other wires were in place (my bad for not noticing this in the instructions).  And the heat travels fast from the iron along the lead to the component, so I was always a bit worried about leaving the iron there too long and frying a component - but it all turned out fine.  Also, there was one case where the full length of the resistor provided was too short to span the connection points, requiring that I bend the connection points closer to enable the resistor to be connected - that was a bit of a pain, but I made due.
 
Point is, I was also pretty hesitant to build it, but if you get the right tools (iron, wire stripper, needle nose pliers, etc), it's not so bad.  It does take awhile, but overall not too difficult even for a beginner like me. 
 

Wow. Okay, I hope enough people order by Sunday. I should probably go ahead and order mine.
 
You have give me some very good information about the build, but I still feel like I could ruin the whole thing.
 
What kind of return policy do they have? Would they give me back my money if I did something horribly wrong?
 

 

[captouch]

Wow. Okay, I hope enough people order by Sunday. I should probably go ahead and order mine.
 
You have give me some very good information about the build, but I still feel like I could ruin the whole thing.
 
What kind of return policy do they have? Would they give me back my money if I did something horribly wrong?
 

I don't think they would give a refund if you messed it up, but I think they might replace individual components that were accidentally damaged. If you check your connections along the way, you can probably tell if you're veering off track. For example, if point A was connected/soldered via wire to point B and point B to point C, then if you checked resistance from A to C and you're solidly connected (0 ohms), you've probably made good connections from A to B and B to C.

I have to admit I did the w/o power resistance checks after the build was complete, but after that was confirmed okay and once I powered up and saw the tubes glowed properly, I just plugged in cheap sacrificial earbuds and checked if I got sound, which I did. I really didn't want to poke around in a live powered device and chose to risk blowing a cheap pair of buds rather than do the final voltage verification.

Anyway, watch some YouTube videos on soldering if that's what you're most uncomfortable with. Honestly, if you can solder, you should be fine. If you haven't before, you can always buy some piece parts from radio shack that are similar to the components in the kit and practice on those first.

What's telling to me is I haven't seen a single post of someone saying they messed the whole thing up beyond repair. People get cold solder joints or have to debug a build sometimes, but I think the Bottlehead folks and forum members are pretty readily available to help.

 

[Timbeh]

i tried to make account for bottlehead forums 3 days ago, and got one email asking why i want the account. i replied, but i think if it´s so hard i rather skip this one.

 

[MilesDavis2]

Quote:

i tried to make account for bottlehead forums 3 days ago, and got one email asking why i want the account. i replied, but i think if it´s so hard i rather skip this one.

That happened to me. They're just filtering spammers. Try again. It is such a good amp to turn away for a simple forum question. I used my crack again last night and it validated the fact that it is such a GOOD AMP!
 
 

 

[Doc B.]

Yes, one of the moderators of the Bottlehead Forum contacts registrants individually simply to keep out spammers. We will be updating the website, including the forum, in the near future and the registration process will be more automated in the newer version. To give you an idea of the scope of the spammer problem, I installed the new automated anti spam registration software on another forum I host, that gets about 80% of the traffic of the Bottlehead Forum. In the past couple of weeks it has weeded out pretty close to 5000 spammers. That's just one little ol' website that gets maybe a quarter million page views a month. Multiply that by the number of forums on the web - I think there might be countries whose entire economic subsistence is based upon meatbot forum spamming for hire.
 
The response to the offer has been great, we are just a couple orders away from hitting the goal already with almost three full days left. So I think that one can order with the confidence that the deepest discount offered will be credited to your account.

 

[Timbeh]

Thanks for the response, Doc. And i didn´t mean to be impatient, i´m working in IT and i know that spam is serious problem all over, in fact over 90% of our corporations emails are spam. And btw, got my ACC activated, say my thanks to your admin

 

[lextek]

Just placed my order for my Crack fix! Birthday present to myself. I'm. Really excited to get this amp. Planning on moving the AC cord and inputs to the rear panel. Probably leave the volume knob and headphone jack on top for now

 

[sennheiserhd485]

Does the Crack have a stepped attenuator?

 

[lextek]

Does the Crack have a stepped attenuator?

As far as I know. No. That is the stock kit.

 

[sennheiserhd485]

Quote:

As far as I know. No. That is the stock kit.

I can't get past the idea of channel volume imbalance. A stepped attenuator is the only fix, right?
 

 

[Armaegis]

Almost all pots will have a slight imbalance at the lowest volumes, but will balance out at normal listening levels. If you're really picky, then you can order a bunch of pots and test each one with a multimeter and pick the best one. Or you could use a separate mono pot for each channel and control them separately. 

 

[jjinh]

Finally started to do some work on my Crack amp... after putting it off for like a year, but it should be finished soon