[John_M]

Tugbars, do you have any thoughts on the 717 ? Or you said the 727 would need to be modded ... who would do this work?

 

[Tugbars]

717 is one of the good STAX amps. KGSSHV design is based on 717 also.(needs verification) You can check https://www.head-case.org/forums/topic/8703-the-srm727-thread/ on how to do the mod and maybe can find someone who can do the mod for you.

 

[AceMew]

Does anyone know if a recently serviced srm 1 mk2 would be good enough for sr 007? Kenrockwell says it is but wouldn’t mind a couple more opinions

 

[powertoold]

Does anyone know if a recently serviced srm 1 mk2 would be good enough for sr 007? Kenrockwell says it is but wouldn’t mind a couple more opinions

No, I've tried it before. It's going to have lots of distortion, even at low-medium volumes.

 

[AceMew]

No, I've tried it before. It's going to have lots of distortion, even at low-medium volumes.

How about 323s ? Is the 353x the only cheaper recent option?

 

[AudioThief]

How about 323s ? Is the 353x the only cheaper recent option?

717 or 727ii of the Stax amps. Can also do with a 007t. Beware, a lot of people will tell you that you have to get third party amps for them "to shine". Do me a favor, don't listen to them. But do get something with power. The less powerful stax amps are great for literally any Stax headphone except the 007.

 

[AceMew]

717 or 727ii of the Stax amps. Can also do with a 007t. Beware, a lot of people will tell you that you have to get third party amps for them "to shine". Do me a favor, don't listen to them. But do get something with power. The less powerful stax amps are great for literally any Stax headphone except the 007.

You say “get something with power” but here I am waiting for literally anything that’s not over 20 years old to pop up for sale :3

 

[Tugbars]

As someone who had 007t and using KGSSHV Carbon with SR007 now, I must say that there's big difference. A good speaker amp & SRD7/mkII(or lundahls) comes very close performance-wise to Carbon. Listen to what other says too, then again I am someone who had both, experienced both, spent a lot of time on Equalizer APO to make themsound as good as they can be. So yeah that's my perspective.

 

[Degru]

I'm getting a second pair of 202 for a friend that has a broken peg (the bit that slots into the earspeaker) on the yoke on one side, but otherwise everything in working condition. I could probably get a replacement yoke 3D printed, but how does the yoke come off the headband? I'm poking around my current pair but can't figure out how to take the headband itself apart. Conveniently the Stax site sells entire new headbands but, inconveniently, it's only in Japan.

EDIT: I just saw the US site sells headbands for L300 that work on 202. Silly me. Still, $75 is pretty steep for some plastic.

 

[astrostar59]

The 007 is more sensitive than other models according to its specs. On another forum, the 007 was level matched across different amps to a quite high 105 dB. There was no difference in frequency response between 252s and 717. It's time for big amp proponents to explain the value, and in clearer terms than "controls the driver with more authority".

Sorry, I disagree. Having owned most of the old and current models at some point, the 007 is not as efficient to my ears as any of the other current line up. They also need a powerful amp to wake them up, it is not just about volume.
The 717 which I also owned for some time, was ahead of the 252, 323, 313 and 727. Until Stax brought out the T-8000 is was the best amp they had made for some time. T2 excepted. Some older T1s were not bad either. The more recent models were not great.
The T-8000 is IMO a major letdown. There re better amps for less.

 

[Tugbars]

capacitance of stators & diaphragm tension determine how hard electrostatic headphones are to drive. Closed stator designs withsmall holes and/or has a thick ring on the edge etc also increase the load on the amp. The more closed the design is, the harder it is to drive. 007 has very low diaphram tension relatively to other models and it's stators have only few open areas relatively to other models.

 

[protoss]

What Stax needs to do is release an SR-007 MK3. An efficient easy to drive 007 and end all this useless amp dependant nonsense. And for the love of Zeus detachable cables for all of your gears.

Stax I know you reading this you slowpokes, wheres my,

Stax 007 MK3
New Omega
Sigma X
L900

You better not release another lame 009 SS version!

 

[Tshiknn]

I've recently gotten a used Stax SR-Lambda. However, the earpads were never replaced (it seems), and they haven't aged super well, as they're now rather hard and just a bit uncomfortable. So I'm looking for earpad replacements. I would love to get something custom, maybe one of the alcantara earpads from Vesper Audio, but I'm worried about whether this would change the sound. I understand that I need to keep the dimensions the same as the original, but would the material make a difference? If so, I will just get some of the replacement Stax earpads - I just like alcantara as a material and wonder if I could get away with it!

 

[ired]

Bias voltage adjustment?

I just acquired a SRM-1 Mk2 PP (C-series) amp complete with it's original caps. So while I have it open to replace the vintage electrolytics, I'd like to make a few mods e.g. add balanced inputs and (output) safety resistors which should be fairly straight forward.

I'd also like to add a bias voltage adjustment along the lines of the SRM-T1W variant amp which had a (front panel) bias voltage trim. Not sure how to best modify the existing voltage divider (R301 - R303) to do so. Hoping to end up with a +/- 20V adjustment for experimentation or occasionally driving non Stax phones e.g.the ESP950 is said to prefer 600V rather than 580V. Here is the SRM-1 Mk2 schematic.. any suggestions on how to tweak the bias voltage?

 

[o7brother]

I'm kind of wondering if it's worth going all the way to the Carbon for the SR-009 or if the regular KGSSHV would already be overkill.

I don't listen at super high volumes and I'd like to save some desk space. I've heard the KGSSHV is somewhat bright sounding, whereas the Carbon is less so, but with a bit of EQ I think either one would work wonders for the 009.