Had a great time as always!
Thanks and kudos to Warren, Ethan, Jude, and all the behind the scenes crew that put in the sweat so that the rest of us could share a few hours of fun, music, and friendship!
Personal highlight was being able to hang out with fellow DIYer's Zashoomin and Gepardcv. Both guys are superb builders and brought great sounding systems. Hopefully we recruited a couple of future builders who will pick up the torch.
Didn't get to listen to much of the commercial stuff, but there was a huge array of gear for all tastes and budgets.
I did spend a bit of time at the Eddie Current table with the new "studio" amp, the Schitt "Yggy", and the HD800's. By far the best HD800 system I've ever heard.
This is pretty much true.
I don't usually accept commissions but this one was special. Jude and Head-Fi have pretty much built this hobby from scratch.
On a personal level, Head-Fi has provided me with a platform to show and share my work, a community of friends, shared technical expertise, and continued inspiration to pursue a series of unusual amplification projects.
On a business level, I could not have asked for a more generous and understanding client than Jude.
Her's a photo of the underside of the 845 electrostatic amp and its' power supply. Power is on the left, amp is on the right.
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Although this was a very ambitious construction project and involves some rather exotic parts ( Thanks to Jack Elliano of Electra-Print Audio who's custom made transformers made this project possible), it's actually fairly simple from an electrical perspective and there is still room for improvement.
Obviously this amp is entirely different from the standard electrostatic headphone amplifier topology. It was a journey to build it. Whether the journey was worthwhile I leave for others to judge. I had fun building it and displaying it.
I'm happy to discuss it further. And if anyone else wants to build something similar, I'm here to help.