[kilkil]

Next meet will be in about a year March/April 2025.

Tennessee - Center Hill Lake: Whiskey-Fi / Head-Fi Meet:
Whiskey, Headphones, and Friends!!! What more could you want!
This meet is open to everyone. I would appreciate that you post you are what equipment you intend to bring.

Date/Time: Saturday March 16, 2024, 11:00am CT and will last all night.

Location: 1847 Puckett Point Rd, Smithville, TN 37166
About an hour east of Nashville, 2 hours north of Chattanooga, 2 hours west of Knoxville

For the people coming from Kentucky on I65, I recommend exit 2 in KY, as before that, there are a lot more small curvy roads.

Parking: The house is on the left side of the road with a driveway that can hold up to 4 cars. Across the street there is a light blue garage, that is also mine, it has another 6-8 parking spaces, plus parking is available on the grass as needed (just past the house on the left side of the road and around the garage).

Lodging: You are welcome to stay here. Hotels are in Cookeville or Lebanon.

Food: Feel free to bring food to share.
Main menu: (to be updated as I make more decisions)
Pulled Pork BBQ
Smoked Bratwurst
Fresh Bread
Salad
Pizza in the evening

Beverage: Feel free to bring beverages to share, please note that the focus of the meet is on audio.
There will be Whiskey, Cachaça, Tequila, Mezcal, Gin, Beer, and more.

Vendors: We are open to vendors attending or sending equipment, please PM me.

Anticipated non-Head-Fi Attendees:
Austin
Mark?

Misc:
Playlist that I usually use for evaluation: https://tidal.com/playlist/30b8e843-78ed-4c99-ac4e-83bca582e34b
The house is wheelchair friendly.

 

[A Jedi]

You may want to add a poll for interested/coming so you have an idea of what you're dealing with.

 

[kilkil]

You may want to add a poll for interested/coming so you have an idea of what you're dealing with.

I added a poll. In the past, I summarized attendees in my first post, though a poll seems easier.

 

[Paladin79]

Here are examples of items I donated to other Schiit meets. Custom cables of course but I prefer to do a bit of woodworking.


I could easily make a custom charcuterie board and knife and donate that and some appropriate lunch food items for your hosting the event.

 

[kilkil]

Here are examples of items I donated to other Schiit meets. Custom cables of course but I prefer to do a bit of woodworking.

Nice looking work, I always love the look of mixed woods. Part of me wants to get into woodworking, then the other part of me is lazy and that part usually wins out. A couple of years ago, I seriously contemplated building an end-grain cutting board, I opted to buy instead of build.

 

[Paladin79]

Nice looking work, I always love the look of mixed woods. Part of me wants to get into woodworking, then the other part of me is lazy and that part usually wins out. A couple of years ago, I seriously contemplated building an end-grain cutting board, I opted to buy instead of build.

I spent my career in electronics but in retirement I often combine woodworking and amp design. I do not listen to much solid state so hopefully there will be some tube gear there.

I ran through your playlist and really like some of the selections.

 

[kilkil]

Others are likely to bring some tube gear. I definitely lean more to solid state, the only tube gear I own is this amp (my first amp build). I built ~17 years ago using the original Pete Millett hybrid amp circuit board

 

[leon995]

Others are likely to bring some tube gear. I definitely lean more to solid state, the only tube gear I own is this amp (my first amp build). I built ~17 years ago using the original Pete Millett hybrid amp circuit board

The amp looks interesting but honestly I was surprised by the headphone stand behind it. Definitely genius idea and I need to get one for myself!

 

[kilkil]

The amp looks interesting but honestly I was surprised by the headphone stand behind it. Definitely genius idea and I need to get one for myself!

Walker, a buddy of mine made it along with a headphone stand from from the handlebars. He may be able to make this meet.

 

[Paladin79]

Others are likely to bring some tube gear. I definitely lean more to solid state, the only tube gear I own is this amp (my first amp build). I built ~17 years ago using the original Pete Millett hybrid amp circuit board

I owned solid state gear for years but now I own that which sounds the best to me. There is a large learning curve for knowing which tubes to buy and from whom. My local audiophile group mostly owns tube gear but we have done blind tests on both. I did build a solid state headphone amp that is class A, the Whammy by Pass Labs employee Wayne Colburn but that is it for me. In my shop I run Bob Carver solid state gear but the amp has the same specs as a Silver Seven and mimics the sound. I also have one of these, a very early hybrid headphone amp. https://www.stereophile.com/content/melos-sha-1-headphone-amplifier-john-atkinson-july-1994. I also refurb mid 70's receivers of 100 watts per channel or more but that is more for nostalgia. I would hate to carry one of those very far. I lean towards Focal on headphones and the Utopias match well with my headphone amp designs. I designed and built this beast in order to win a bet, but once again it is a bit heavy to move around much. Power tubes were used in German and Russian transmitters during WW2.

 

[Paladin79]

I built a cardboard amp as a joke but donated the real design to one of my friends. Tiger maple, 1/8 inch copper plate top. Out of fifty I built, all unique in appearance, this is the only sideways Incubus Elegans amp I built. I turned the legs on a wood lathe then quartered them on a table saw just to see if it could be done.

 

[kilkil]

I built a cardboard amp as a joke but donated the real design to one of my friends. Tiger maple, 1/8 inch copper plate top. Out of fifty I built, all unique in appearance, this is the only sideways Incubus Elegans amp I built. I turned the legs on a wood lathe then quartered them on a table saw just to see if it could be done.

The cardboard amp, reminds me a bit of when I was a youngin, and using cardboard as a case, since I couldn't buy anything. Though yours looks much much better even though it is cardboard.
The Tiger maple amp is beautiful. You are now making me want to listen to more tubes.

 

[Paladin79]

The cardboard amp, reminds me a bit of when I was a youngin, and using cardboard as a case, since I couldn't buy anything. Though yours looks much much better even though it is cardboard.
The Tiger maple amp is beautiful. You are now making me want to listen to more tubes.

The back of the cardboard amp. RCA inputs arranged in a pentagram shape. Five right channel, three left channel. Music sensitivity switches on the front that went from John Denver to Marilyn Manson.

As far as tubes I conducted studies on over 1500 6SN7 types of tubes and have a large collection of some of my favorites. Barring bad health, if I can make it down there I will bring some tubes to roll.

I can also bring mini-radial speakers I build, they do well with low powered Schiit amps as well as most anything of 5-10 watts.

 

[Paladin79]

I can also help with custom cables and I have built various types of switch boxes etc.



This is a 5x2 device with VU meters to monitor signal levels.

I built this for Schiit for a blind tube test I helped with. Basically I built a device that would send a single signal to four devices at one time, then a way to switch between them and listen with one set of speakers or one set of headphones. It was for switching between four tubes in separate preamps but it can also A-B-C-D test four headphone amps if so desired. I built four sets of interconnects in various colors so it was easy for others to set up.

 

[Paladin79]

This is the Melos SHA-1 amp I could bring, a vacuum tube headphone/line amplifier. Circa 1994. Some of you may know the ALPS Black Beauty pot, it has one.