[flavirufus]

My electrical experience: A wizard with a soldering iron (built more battery packs than you could ever imagine), assembled a beautiful mini^3 about a year ago, have been making my own cables (for pretty much everything). I took an electronics class about 7 years ago and worked a bit with high voltage back then and could read fairly complex wiring diagrams... now... not so much. Give me a basic schematic with a simple circuit with basic components and I am ok, start throwing in opamps and such and I get a bit lost. So I'm definitely VERY rusty at this point.

Other experience: I wouldn't say I'm a pro, but I'm certainly competent with hand tools so modding cases or creating something out of raw material isn't beyond me (I have some decent education in machining though I don't have any access to mills/lathes/cnc's at the moment).

What I like: I love assembling boards. I'd love some tubes. I'd love to fiddle with multiple desktop amps (so whatever I start working on in the near future won't by my end-all amp).

What I'm looking for now: Something to get me in easy and start the re-education process but isn't so basic that I won't enjoy listening to it and want to make a jump to something else right away (so that would be a pass to cmoy). Something that will complement my current headphones nicely. I have ah-d5000, k702, k271mk2 and dt-990 600ohm version.

The last thing I looked into (only lightly) was the M cubed. Some of the reasons I was looking into it were: I love the mini cubed, so why not go with another amb labs design? I like the idea of having bass adjustment. AMB and Glass Jar are both local to me (about 15 minutes away). I was somewhat dissuaded at the time mainly due to working with high voltage and building a power supply (I suppose using a walwart wouldn't be out of the question but a sigma 11 sounds like it's probably a better way to go).

Another interesting project I'm thinking about is the Starving Student but it looks like Beezar is out of stock on the PCB's and by the wording on their site it almost appears as if they won't be carrying them again. I'll have to shoot them an email. I have no fear in building one without a PCB but I get a heck of a lot more pleasure out of assembling PCBs than the alternative choice.

I'm not really looking into getting anything right now (I have another big project I need to get out of the way first!), but I'd like to get some good "starter" options and reading done now so that by the time I'm ready to order parts, I'll be good to jump in.

 

[FallenAngel]

Got a budget in mind? How are you with casework?

 

[fishski13]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif Got a budget in mind? How are you with casework?

x2.

the world is your oyester, but you have two difficult HPs to drive, the K702 and DT990/600ohm. i have both the K271 and DT990/600ohm and owned the K701. the M3 is any easy build and can drive most HPs easily. if you can build a mini-3, you can build an M3. the chassis work is pretty basic for this build if you go with the bog standard Hammond enclosures.

 

[CodeToad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishski13 /img/forum/go_quote.gif x2. if you can build a mini-3, you can build an M3. the chassis work is pretty basic for this build if you go with the bog standard Hammond enclosures.

Second that. Ventilation is important so you probably will need to drill a bunch of holes. A drill press is almost a necessity. Case work is the PITA, the M3 is not hard to stuff at all.

 

[oneplustwo]

If you're interested in tubes, the minimax would be a good build to shake the rust off so to speak as well.

 

[m1abrams]

Just to add to the M3. It sounds great with my K702s.

If you respect and understand high-voltage then building a s11 should not be an issue. Just remember to respect and pay attention whenever working with mains and you will be fine. I recommend wearing eye protection the first time you power up a s11, a cap installed backwards can make a heck of a mess.

 

[MrSlim]

Check out Cavalli's SOHA II and CTH as well, if your are open to Hybrids. I've built a couple of CTH's
and it drive's my K601's(120 ohm's, and some have said are harder to drive than the 701/2) very well, and the same goes for my HD580's(300 ohms). The CTH has a quite high component count for its size(not much room for troubleshooting) but if Alex's instructions are followed closely (check cavalliaudio.com) you shouldn't have a problem. Although I haven't heard it, opinion on the SOHA II is that it is a superior amp, with the higher voltage mods that bring the amp up to an even higher level. The beauty of the SOHA II and CTH is that most of the power supply is built in. The CTH requires a 24 AC wall wart (readily available) and SOHA II just requires a Transformer to complete the power supply. The CTH and SOHA II can be built into Hammond Cases, simplifying casework(always a good thing from my perspective).

 

[Spacehead]

I would recommend Tori Amp

It gives most excellent distortion free sound and is easy to build with Sijosae's excellent layouts.

http://www.headphoneamp.co.kr/bbs/zb...esc=asc&no=109

Class A, purest sound !

 

[flavirufus]

Thanks for the advice! I think I definitely want to do an M3 and one of the hybrid max's. How different are the max and hybrid minimax? It seems like it's hard to find comparison threads but maybe I'm not searching hard enough!

Casework is no problem for me at all. I intend on making several amps over the next few years (I love to solder/fiddle/play with sound). I'd like to do a few out of wood and acrylic at some point. I'd like to keep total cost under $300 for each (for the guts, no case/wire/plugs) if doable and it seems as if most of the amps mentioned in this thread hit that mark.

 

[FallenAngel]

They're almost the same, minimax is smaller and made to fit the custom chassis. The MAX is has more wiggle room with parts and if you aren't using the custom chassis, build the MAX.

 

[tomb]

The MAX can be built with a MOSFET-diamond buffer as well, a very powerful and current-driving option (great for Grados and K701's, for instance). I'm biased (not just the amp

), of course, but that's an important distinction depending on the headphones you're interested in. It can be biased at close to 2W per output MOSFET (2 per channel).