[Svatopluk]

The HD-800 and MK VI+ pair very well on female vocals with the right tubes. Right now I'm using the RCA 5691 and Thomson 6080WA which produce an all-round positive result at a reasonable price, they really bring out the HD-800's bass.
I'm sure there are other tube combo's that will make the MK VI+ shine as well depending on how much you wish to spend.

 

[Maxx134]

...
Great stuff those Kiwame, nice buy. They smell quality, unlike those blue chinese failure...

...
The 5 watt blue metal film units are bog standard Chinese generics. In reality they are probably only rated for max 300vdc and about 3-4watts of heat disspitation. Rather poor for "power resistors".

I was looking at the internal board of the mk6 & mk8..
It seems the "blue chinese fail" resistor issue have been adressed in the mk8, OR
They put weaker ones?!
They are BLACK in the mk8..
Do any mk6 have these black looking resistors???

LOOk:


AND:


??
edit:
OMG upon closer inspection they look anemic!
Still maybe better?
I realize they are for specific power tube,
So probably thats why..

 

[G600]

Don't know, I believe they aren't used anymore in actual builds.
Not expensive to send them some Kiwame or replace them yourself.
It's worth doing.

 

[coinmaster]

I just officially bought a MKVI+ in silver! Yaaaaaay!

Hopefully no one looks at my bills

 
Next stop.....schiit yggdrasil....or questyle CAS192D...and then some ridiculously overpriced xlr cables...oh god what have you people done to me

 

[Androb]

  I just officially bought a MKVI+ in silver! Yaaaaaay!

Hopefully no one looks at my bills

 
Next stop.....schiit yggdrasil....or questyle CAS192D...and then some ridiculously overpriced xlr cables...oh god what have you people done to me

Welcome to the family! 

There actually is some nice xlr cables on places like aliexpress for a quite nice pricetag actually!!

 

[Poladise]

Wow, just made an interesting (noob?) discovery. When I first got the VI+ a few months ago I used it single ended for a couple hours before altering my LCD2 & Grado cables to add the 4 pin balanced connections. When I tried it balanced, I thought it sounded cleaner and wasnt sure if I was just imagining it, but there seem like less bass. I do remember craving some more body to the sound in the few weeks afterwards, but I then sent it back to LD to sort a slight channel imbalance and upgrade the caps.
 
Got the amp back recently and was impressed with the clarity improvement from the new caps, but still thought the VI+ was too anemic sounding. Over the last week I became tired of it's sound: very clear and spacious, but lacking any low end grunt and almost unpleasantly forward mids. I'd been looking to see what bass heavy tubes I could buy to fix it. 
 
Then tonight I thought back to when I first tried the amp and about that switch to balanced being a bit thinner sounding. Made up an adapter to go back to SE... yes! totally fixed, everything I was missing has been filled back in, sounds sooo much better now.
 
Is that weird balanced sound i've been getting, the effect of my single ended source being converted to a balanced signal in the amp?

 

[john57]

Very clear and spacious sounds also can mean that bass is also very tight which can give the impression of less bass. The VI+ has a very clear sound in general. Just use the output you like. Some different driver tubes do have a darker sound.

 

[G600]

Are you sure your source doesn't have a design flaw with balanced outputs ?

 

[Poladise]

Weird thing is, when run I SE input to balanced out, it sounds very similar to how the Mjolnir was when I tried it. I couldnt believe what I was hearing from the Mjolnir was the sound that some many rave about, but that could be similar to whats happening with the VI.
 
Wish I had a balanced dac to try.  I thinking either there may be a problem with how I've wired the xlrs or SE to balanced does some weird cancelling out in the spectrum.

 

[zenpunk]

The LD cannot convert SE input to balanced out. You were listening to half the amp...

 
I really don't undersdand why anybody would use this amp with a SE source. 

 

[Poladise]

Just wanted to do it in stages, thought I could use SE input with balanced out for a while until I acquired a proper dac.

 

[zenpunk]

Fair enough. I do think Little Dot are actually making  a disservice to themselves and that fantastic amp by fitting SE inputs and outputs.
Not too sure why you build a SE to balanced cable as the LD already has SE inputs???

 

[Poladise]

Not sure what you mean Zen, but I made my grados and lcds balanced and my SE dac has always gone to the SE input on the amp.
Tonight I made an adapter so the phones could go back into the amps SE output.

 

[baronbeehive]

No bass with the LCD2 there's got to be something up. You can't get a true balanced signal all the way from source out of a single ended input, although you could split it later of course, so the signal is half of the signal coming out of the balanced output so it could be out of phase or something. I don't know if you have wired up the balanced cable properly, don't know how it works with the LCD. You should use it SE or balanced but not a combination of both, If you can try it with a balanced source and you still have the problem then it must be that channel imbalance or wrongly wired cable.

 

[greenkiwi]

Fair enough. I do think Little Dot are actually making  a disservice to themselves and that fantastic amp by fitting SE inputs and outputs.
Not too sure why you build a SE to balanced cable as the LD already has SE inputs???

I don't see a problem with se outputs, as long as they work from the balanced inputs.

Se inputs should only be there if there is an inverter to turn them into balanced