aokman
100+ Head-Fier
I guess I'm not in the right circles as I haven’t seen readily available info on building these amps from the horses mouth so to speak… Just various dubious chinese boards on ebay and random build versions and revisions floating around in the internet that aren’t documented.Considering that you're already well-versed in electronics assembly, I'm surprised you didn't go down the route of building your own KGSSHV or Carbon. The schematics and boards are available, the parts lists are available, and SPICE models for the components are also available so that you can simulate the performance of the amp in software. And then once you build it, you can measure it as much as you want. You've talked about how you don't trust amps without measurements and I get that, but here, you have the amps' designs freely available to you. There's no secret sauce that the designers are trying to hide (though individual builders might have tweaked their own builds to varying extents). If you think the amp's design or performance is BS, then you can either simulate it in SPICE and point out that it performs terribly in simulation, or you can build it and measure it and prove that the amp is terrible.
I could certainly build one and would like to but I wouldn’t do it unless it was a very well documented design / with latest revision etc. Likewise people underestimate the time, cost and resources it takes to build, it can take me multiple days just to vet and build a parts order just for an amp restoration
Maybe ill cross paths with something eventually but I just started development of a new transformer setup, more pro bias updates etc… I have really enjoyed transformers to be honest as there has been a lot more variety in amp topology with my VFET, Mosfet and Carver design amps. Personally the Sansui 907MR with the loudness on really did it for me though and has become my standard.
