[2004-09-22]

Packing up the Subaru.

Monkey amp riding shotgun.

Matt Wiebe's fantastic JE Labs open baffles with Fostex FX200s. These had suprizingly good bass, and an open (you guessed it) sound to them that was really appealing.

Matt says: "Yes it sure does look like charred wood around those speakers. That is what happens when you are all out of wood bits for the Rotozip and you press ahead with a plasterboard bit."

Matt's magnet wire and packing tape speaker cable.

Matt says: "I mounted the Fostex FX200 to the back side of the baffle for no other reason than I have small kids and vacuum the house with a 5hp shop vacuum. The grill cloth keeps prying fingers from crunching the aluminum dust caps and saves me the delicate task of sucking the dents out with the shop vac."

Matt's super cute little Fostex FF85K 3" "tweeters".

Matt: "Fostex FF85K on little open baffles which are just great little speakers. I have some Altec 420As (15-inch full-range) on open baffles that I really like, but want more high-end. Somehow I hope to bring the two speakers together."

Matt's 6sl7 phono stage with Altec mic transformers.

Matt: "JE Labs 6SL7 phono amp with input help, if needed, from a pair of Altec 15095s step-ups."

Matt is a big fan of the prototype, and this sweet regulated tube power supply lets him build at a remarkable rate.

Matt: "Bench supply full of Thordarson Transformers and chokes and lots of 10uF oil caps. Should be good for 50 years."

Matt's transformer step-up passive preamp.

Matt: "The empty tube socket on this yellow box is just to get this in the door. Inside is what Electraprint call their take on transformer volume controls. It's a 1 to 8 step-up Nickel core transformer (150 ohms to 10K) that is terminated with a 10K pot across the secondary. The transformer is very sensitive to source output impendence. The output impedance of the Toshiba 3950/60 CD player does not work with this transformer, while the Rotel RCD-855 CD player and many others sources work great."

Matt built this experimenter's rig so we could taste test his collection of output transformers.

Matt: "The dark box in the middle is a 8233 spud amp built for the output transformer tasting. The magnoval pentode has G2 and G3 tied to the plate for triode operation and was running with about 180V on the plate and 60ma of plate current. On top of the box with the white labels are some Eastern Audio 3K or 5K to 4 or 8 Ohms 150ma output transformers which end up costing about $129 from Hong Kong via airmail. Also present were James JS-6123HS, Hammond 1628SE and 125ESE and Daburu AC-SC8 C-core 5K/8 ohm 65ma, another Chinese transformer."

Push-pull subminiature pencil tubes with acorn driver.

Matt: "A breadboard for subminiature tubes to knock up some miniature guitar P-P amps. Pairs of 6021, 6111 and 5902s were ready to go. The dark cocobolo box in the middle is a P-P amp. It has a 955 acorn doing the voltage step-up to an Edcor 10K/10K handling phase splitting to a P-P pair of 5902s to a Hammond 125C. At less than 2W output it's normal duty is driving a Klipsch La Scala."

My monkey amp makes friends with lots of preamps and stepups. My Foreplay is the no-gain version which proved quite problematic with the output of Phil's Toshiba coming straight off the DAC.

The outermost speakers are Aaron's back breakers - Pioneer fullrange with Radio Shack Piezos... loaded with 60lbs of sand each!

Phil's awesome Darling with monster oil cap.

Phil's impeccable construction including old-school tied wire and wooden standoffs.

Believe it or not, this is a Toshiba CD player! Or at least it was... or something.

Phil's Toshiba again. Is this thing modded enough for ya? Hey Phil - which one is Play?

Phil describes his CD Toshiba 3960 mods:

Your job is remove the tiny 5.2K resistors that are robbing you of db. Float them off... Once removed you must carefully solder a SMALL wire to bridge the very small solder pads. Get a good magnifying glass...small tip solder iron.(10watt) Take your time... And it will work. I used some cat5 wire to bridge.

John Day wrote the following... I paraphrase here and there. I would have copy and paste but I cant find the original post on the A.A. I did print it out...Read on O trusty solder slingers."

The last two pins on the DAC (facing you) toward the right go to the (-) of caps 910 & 921. The resistors are just to the left of caps 910 & 912 as you view the board in place from the front and above. If you put your probe on those last two pins together you should get 5.2k ohms to the (-) pins (toward you) of caps 910 & 912, Then Zero after bypassing. Replace the DAC supply caps, 903 and 905 with 12v to 16v @10 to 100 ufd...use the very highest quality parts at this location. They supply the DAC directly. Pull out the little yellow film caps by the RCA outputs. These shunt to ground. The inner lead of the left one goes to the hot pin of the left channel and the inner lead of the right one goes to the hot output of the right channel. The holes are useful. Place your output caps in the holes left by the neg. pins of 910 and 912 and these central holes from the output shunt caps. Left to left and right to right. End John Day...Thank you sir.

I started with 47 NP BGs...For me, not good. Then I tried some 1 mike Auricaps then 2 mikes and settled on 3 mikes Auris. I also tried Vit.Q 1 and two mikes, not for me. If one of you guys will buy me a couple of 2 and 3 mike Hovlands...

Start J.D.
Remove the 6 pin opamp. It shunts the output to ground when there is no sig. If it were to shunt to ground when there is a sig...your DAC would be playing into an AC short. Might not happen but...It wont hurt to remove it anyway... This mod doesn't reverse absolute phase ...Output is down 3db over the stock player.
End J.D.

USE SHORT INTERCONNECTS! Or suffer the loss of bass. I don't eat bass...why do bass and bass taste and sound so different? Maybe it should read: Or suffer the loss of lower register. Unless you have too much lower register.
You can never be...
To rich or
To thin or
to much Bass.
Swap the stock power cord...I used the Home Despot 14ga. Orange and black aka Halloween wire... Some guy on AA wire say its good for speaker too. On the power supply side of the Tosh do the full Vinne Mod. Except install 2 .47mike@600v Auricaps In place of the two X2 caps...Think about this since they are not X2 rated. There is a fully wave bridge I replaced with some High speed fast recovery diodes...I did some other ones as well but I was just fishing and I have zero idea if it was a good idea. I used Black Gates in all part swaps. I installed a Reference Audio silver isolation transformer (120VA) WAY TOO MUCH MONEY, but it shore duz the trick boys and girls. Then a snubber after the trannie. Use the right parts for this snubber cause if the trannie is plugged in, the snubber sees AC ALL the time...You have been warned.

I built a wooden chassis for my Nosh. (Freudian slip?) ( I am, without a doubt, the largest vegan I have ever met) The inside is lined with Dyna-mat. That car stick-on stuff...Tar on one side and aluminum on the other. You will never get if off, once on. Transport took some extra effort. First, I tried using the little rubber bushing as supplied. But found the transport bounced around, not a number 3 fit. The transport was resonating and this was not in the cards. Remounting the transport on a 1/4"brass plate and bolted the brass to the base of my box... Nope, no love here. Next, bolted the transport to the maple base...no go. Then, (insert light bulb here) I epoxied a one inch thick slab of maple to the brass plate then mounted the transport to the maple slab. It looks like this: Transport on top, the maple slab then the 1/4" brass. I used epoxy and clamps to join the brass to the maple. Dissimilar materials and all. I would not like to have the unit fall on my poor foot. Now the big question is what is the best way to decouple the transport, maple and brass from the base of my box? I don't know. Roller balls? Spikes? Simple screw it in? I'm leaning to mini roller balls. BTW I covered every reasonable surface of the transport with Dyna-mat. That sure helped. I built a box with five sides to house the transport, PS and Audio board. The back is open but stuffed with 1 inch foam board after the lid is screwed on. The base is a maple butcher block that I stole, fair and square, from my wife, Chris. Man we got big ass pack rats around here. The tops and sides are Home Despot plywood. I found, as did John Swenson, that the Tosh has to get hot to work well. To that end a probe was applied to the guts of the box. Sounds very Cartman like. Best temp for me was 96 degrees. This took about an hour. The foil face of the Dyna-Mat and the plywood helps to hold the temp. Insulation! AC ground floats. Didn't bother with audio jewelry RCA's. Used the stock. Call me lazy. Enough is enough.

Last job was to build a copper cage around the PS and replace the wiring harness from the PS to the Audio board. Yes, shield the wire going to the Audio board.

How does it sound?
Beats me...
but if you want my records let me know.

Phil

For more info on any of this stuff, shoot me an email at jsn at boozhoundlabs.com.