Bottlehead Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: audiophileboss on November 10, 2013, 03:11:45 AM
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In the mood to buy a new headphone amp. Whats a great amp to pair with Sennheiser HD800 and either Cardas Clear cables or ALO audip Reference 16 cable?
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Mainline, Sex or Crack.... :)
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Crack I have with $3000 in upgrades and its alright, but not great. Mainline intrigues me...but I am talking amps I can buy assembled
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Crack I have with $3000 in upgrades and its alright, but not great. Mainline intrigues me...but I am talking amps I can buy assembled
Based on your priorities, I would suggest not buying any Bottlehead products at all.
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As a disclaimer: I think bottlehead is a great company. They run bussiness as they should. I love this forum. And they can get good sounding equipment for low prices considering what something of that calliber would cost, in the hands of those who aspire to diy but dont know how. I myself, am not a huge diyer. I dont mind spending the money, but I know what good sound is.
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Now if anyone has a good pairing with the 800s, please tell me of it.
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HDVD800
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You can get a Mainline built for you. I imagine custom as well right here on the forum.. The service is available... As Doc said before, if that amp was a pre built complete with fancy aluminum chassis, boutique parts etc from a retail company, it would very conservatively have to cost at least $2500 bucks, and VERY likely much more... Give it a shot and give us a review...
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Crack I have with $3000 in upgrades and its alright, but not great. Mainline intrigues me...but I am talking amps I can buy assembled
Ok - you've certainly piqued my interest - any chance you'd give us a run down of the $3k in upgrades?
In answer to your question, if you're looking for a cost is no object commercial amp for your hd800's, you might google up the Eddie Current Leviathan (which evidently incorporates $3k worth of transformers heh).
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I think PB said it best here, audiophileboss, you should probably be talking to a different manufacturer. We appreciate your having bought a product from us.
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Thanks for suggestions. I most probably will order from Bottlehad again. But I will stick to prebuilt amps. Hats off to doc and "queen" for such a great company.
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Again, as I said... There is a build service on this forum available...
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To respond to comment about the upgrades in my crack, $250 pot added, $1500 in bybees added ($750 a pair, 2 input, 2 output) all black gat capacitors instead of stock that I got in a lot cheap $750. 2nd much larger transformer $1250 rather large power supply $900 in parts, new $60 fuse, all new wireing $600.00.
So actually more than $3k. Basically its nothing like stock crack. Once I finish cabnet I may post a photo.
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What is a black gat capacitor?
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Sorry black gate...the brand. Also I forgot to mention I had a $4000 power cable lying around so I threw that on too. So well over $5000 in upgrades.
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(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmangobirdie.files.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F02%2Fdont-feed-troll-calm.jpeg&hash=6b45c4a6486208fb9b412bbfc85d7e95f66a8af5)
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Crack I have with $3000 in upgrades and its alright, but not great. Mainline intrigues me...but I am talking amps I can buy assembled
I don't mean to be a wise a$$ but maybe some of those "upgrades" made your amp, "not great." Sometimes trying to substitute parts can harm performance. Trust me, I've been there, done that. Never tried a $60 fuse though. I'll have to look into that.
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Oh yeah, how could I forget the $100 12au7 and $200 6080.
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All that dough and you still got this nasty "left hum"
Amazing. High dollar tubes, interconnects, power cables, pots and whatever else you could drop a lotta bucks on and you still got that nasty hum.
Bummer dude.
Give it up baby, it's time to go. Pay someone who knows what they are doing to build your stuff or just buy some more high dollar stuff that comes assembled inna box. Then you can add your usual 3 grand of wires to it and wax in the glory.
Really. You added 3 grand to a 3 hundred dollar kit and it sounds worse than a stocker. Quit.
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No dude, your wrong. Sounds way better, but it has a hum. I will figure it out.
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No dude, your wrong. Sounds way better, but it has a hum. I will figure it out.
Most likely you are missing or have a loose connection or it's not grounded properly. It could also be picking up magnetic fields from other equipment nearby.
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Quite possibly one of your nos tubes. Have you tried reverting to the stock tubes?
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No I havnt, and I cant I threw them away. Maybe I will buy a mew tube and try it out
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Yeah - that's where I'd put my money if I were betting. If you have any deoxit on hand, try that on the pins. If not, and they look oxidized at all, you can also try sanding the pins or repeatedly inserting/pulling them as a means of cleaning them off. Folks recommended that I do this a year or so back with a 1950's rca blackplate 12bh7 I had that was humming. It solved the problem.
FWIW, my finding has been that price is definitely not a guarantee of a great tube. My favorite input tube at present in my crack is basic tung sol 12au7 that I bought for about $10. I periodically compare it to pricier mullards, amperex and rca's sitting in my closet, and keep coming back to the tung sol. Picking up a bunch of cheapies on ebay is, imo, a better way of finding one you really like than dropping a bill on a single 12au7.
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Is that an NOS tung sol or the new production ones?