[london luke]

HI- FI WORLD HD 83 HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER


Anyone tried one of these????

 

[aeberbach]

Highly recommended. I built one then re-did it without the PCB, much improvement. I think it is great value for money.

 

[london luke]

Can you tell me more about what changes you made and why???

Cheers

 

[aeberbach]

Having a PCB in there just didn't seem tubey enough. To me they just don't go together. Handmade Electronics was selling a prototyping board with space for two miniature tubes spaced almost exactly to match the ventilation holes in the chassis, beautiful things in thick fibreglass with thick copper ground plane and old-style turret terminals. Besides that I hated the way the transformer wiring came out to the PCB for selection of output impedance, I thought the power supply could be improved and I also wanted the AC heater wires further away from the signal. On the exterior I added an IEC socket so the power cord was detachable and got a much larger aluminum volume control too.
Re-designing the circuit as point-to-point didn't take long and it was definitely quieter. Of course because I had gone to all that trouble I enjoyed it much more too. I don't remember who I sold it to and I should buy another kit, just so I have one on hand - I just had a quick look on hndme.com and I don't see those proto boards available any more.

 

[rickfri]

I'm a bit confused about this amp. If this amp is the World Audio Design HD-83, or if WAD changed their name, I'm the one who bought one from aeberbac.
I had built one myself, and for various reasons, wanted another one, and bought aeberbac's.
The one I bought from aebebach sounds better than the one I put together, but the one built directly from WAD's kit sounds very impressive also. I also installed an IEC power conneter on the one I built. That was probably the hardest part of building the kit, the chasis is really hefty. I prefer the sound of this amp with Senns better than the MAD Ear+, but I prefer the Ear+ with Grados. The kit itself is very easy to build and has excellent documentation. Since the basic kit isn't all point to point wiring, it makes for a good first DIY tube project. You can download the instructions from the WAD website before you buy the amp, and look at what you have to do to assemble it. Right now, I have the amp I bought from aeberbac in my headphone system and the one I built installed in my main speaker system.