[rickfri]

I received the World Audio HD83 headphone amplifier kit and put
it together this weekend. I fired it up and all the voltage
checks were within tolerance.
When I started listening to a CD the background vocalists seemed
to be more pronounced than the lead singer, and the lead singer seemed
to be at a distance and sound strange, almost like in an echo chamber
without the echo.
When I put in a test CD I can hear the right and left channel
tests, but they both come through both ears, almost like a mono
amp with the strange sounding effect.
I think (and I could be wrong, I'm really new to this) that if one
of the tubes were bad I would only get one channel through the appropriate ear.
Has anybody else had this problem, or know what might cause it?
Any help would be appreciated, before I make a long distance call to World Audio in London.
On top of all this my internet connection is down. I came into work
early to send this. I have Cox @Home and they are hooked up with Excite.
So I may be a little slow in replying.
Thanks in advance.

 

[divie23]

Hmm strange, I did once have an experience with a DIY amp where I'd forgotten to hook up the ground for the input and output thus resulting in a weird kind of sound effect. Probably not your problem but thought I'd throw the idea in anway.

Divie

 

[rickfri]

I found it. Thanks for the help anyway.
Stupid mistake. The last thing I wired up was
the headphone jack. It was a strange looking jack
with three horseshoe shaped prongs making six contacts.
The horshoes thingees were solid and I measured across the two pins made up be each horseshoe and they were a short, so I thought either side would do. Wrong!!! When I moved my
ground to the same side as my inputs it solved the problem.
Jack must be made so you can go either mono or stereo, or something.

 

[Apheared]

No, not mono/stereo... but a switch. Those "horseshoes" are only a short with no plug inserted... Divie's right, you were floating the phones ungrounded, by wiring the ground wire to the side that got unswitched when the plug was inserted. Great troubleshooting.

I've heard of a few people now building this commercial tube kit but they never come back to the Amps section and report in on how it sounds after a few weeks... hint hint!

 

[rickfri]

I would like some sort of review of how it sounds but want to let it break in for a while. When burning in my other amps I left them running with a test signal going through them when I went to work. I'm a little afraid to let a tube amp that I made myself running while I'm gone, probably an unfounded fear but I don't want to set my apartment on fire. So maybe after the holidays I can do something.
Also, this amp has a pass through at the inputs. Would it be a fair comparison to hook my Corda HA-1 up to the pass through and review the amps side by side, or would I get some signal degradation in there?
If I did this I could use a pair of Senn 600's with blue clou cables and a pair of Senn 580's with red clou cables on the amps and just switch phones. I think maybe the difference in clou's would be as close as I could get to making the phones equal. It sure would be easier to listen to differences without having to switch phones and cabeling. Would this be fair?

 

[rickfri]

I left out a couple of prepositional phrases in my previous post. I meant "to do" some sort of review and "to leave" an amp running. It's early, and I haven't had my coffee. Sorry.