Bottlehead Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Doc B. on September 20, 2016, 11:41:21 AM
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We're bringing back the old Vintage Audio Listeners and Valve Enthusiasts DIY audio club! Bring yourself, your friend, your latest DIY audio project (finished or not) and some music to Bottleheadquarters on Saturday October 15th from 1-4. We'll be playing your finished DIY audio projects in our reference system and you can show off your work in progress and maybe even get a little friendly help with it in the lab.
We have scoured the old folks homes in the region found several of the original club members. So wear your high water pants and waterproof boots - the bullshit will be running deep!
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Excited about this!
For those on Facebook here is the link for the event, https://www.facebook.com/events/1060735660707860/ (https://www.facebook.com/events/1060735660707860/)
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Just a little bump to remind you about this Saturday's meet. We'll have a full system up and running, natch, and you will be able to plug your latest project in and give it a listen. Got a project that isn't turning out quite like you expected? Bring it by and we'll offer suggestions for making it work the way you want it to.
I will also be happy to demo our single prototype kit speaker in glorious mono.
(https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/s960x960/14543735_10208341047457567_6771196249865782928_o.jpg)
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Sorry folks, the weathermen finally came to a consensus that tomorrow's storm is going to be really gnarly. The bad stuff is predicted to start just as the meet would be ending, putting everyone on the road home during the big wind. It's also likely we would be without power, Bainbridge is already down in some areas from last night's preview storm. Thus we have decided to cancel the meet.
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Good call, Dan. Will look forward to attending the rescheduled event.
-Jim
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Sorry folks, the weathermen finally came to a consensus that tomorrow's storm is going to be really gnarly. The bad stuff is predicted to start just as the meet would be ending, putting everyone on the road home during the big wind. It's also likely we would be without power, Bainbridge is already down in some areas from last night's preview storm. Thus we have decided to cancel the meet.
That sucks. But I'm glad that the good folks at Bottlehead are putting safety first. Mother nature doesn't F around. I'm respectfully going to get comfortable under my S.E.X. 2.1 and HD600 setup and contemplate whether or not I want to upgrade to a Mainline during the latest Bottlehead sale. I think I already know what the answer will be.
Peace.
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Any ideas on the new date now that the storm has passed?
(https://scontent.fsnc1-5.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/14725632_1109288242481953_9008924880793665431_n.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=6166442db986f6ebaff66618fcebe387&oe=589E18A7)
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Sorry, we just came out of our bunker this morning. Once the wind got over 8 MPH I panicked. I think we had a gust of 14 at one point. Terrifying.
Josh and I tried to second guess what date everyone would want for a reschedule. Our decision was to set the first Saturday of each month as meeting day. So we will shoot for Saturday, November 5th, 1-4 pm. We'll just have to hope that we don't have another storm with the destructive power of the last one. There were so many leaves on my sidewalk I almost broke down and cried.
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Just a little bump to remind everyone that the meetup is this Saturday. Please do bring a project if you have one to bring, and no worries if you don't have one to bring. We'll have a few interesting projects of our own to show off:
the prototype of the new S.E.X. amp that is coming out soon
A second Neothoriator 845 headphone amp/preamp/speaker amp we recently completed
and it looks possible that we will have not just one but a pair of our new speaker kit prototypes running
I will also be playing the latest Tape Project release, Reference Recordings' Mozart piano concertos 21 in C Major and 24 in C Minor, Eugene Istomin and the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz.
Saturday, November 5th, 1-4 pm. 9415 Coppertop Loop NE, Suite 101, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
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I'll be there with my latest collaborative project (thanks to PJ and PB), a headphone/Stax earspeaker/ speaker amp using a 2C22 driver and 71A output tube. Hopefully it sounds as good as it looks when compared to the BH fair. 😊
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Hi Doc,
Is there any chance that at future meetings the proceedings could be "broadcast" sort of webinar style so that those of us who can't make it can "tune in" via the internet.
Jamie
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We keep getting asked about this, but I can't really see how we would do that. This is an event where people mill around different rooms, drink and eat, shoot the shit, blow stuff up, argue about music, etc. It's not really a seminar, more of a party. I would however love it if participants wanted to video bits that they liked and posted them for everyone to see. That would be great.
We are also investigating some ideas for education. We are looking at both construction type classes and lectures on design aspects. It is possible that we could broadcast or post videos of the lecture classes.
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"I will also be playing the latest Tape Project release, Reference Recordings' Mozart piano concertos 21 in C Major and 24 in C Minor, Eugene Istomin and the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz"
I missed when you announced it! Cool
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You didn't miss it, that was the first announcement. ;D The official announcement will be on the TP website soon. The first albums will be going together next week and shipping to series 3 subscribers. Once those have been delivered we will have the album available for sale on the Tape Project website.
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It would be helpful for our planning to hear from those who are coming by tomorrow. Let us know here if you will be here! I'm pensively waiting for the brown truck to bring kit speaker prototype number 2. When it gets here I'll be spending the afternoon putting it together so we have a pair to listen to tomorrow. We also have a Neothoriator set up to demo.
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I'm planning to carpool with Ed and Richard.
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I am planning on being there. Looking forward to it.
John
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I am also planning on coming
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Awesome! We know of at least 15 who plan to come, so this should be fun. John Rutter managed to get kit speaker #2 prototype to us yesterday. I got it finished up last night. It sounded pretty green compared the the first prototype, and Josh left it running all night (Maggot Brain, on repeat, in honor of the wine maker next door who leaves crushed grape skins fermenting and crawling with flies outside our door each October) to get some break in time on it. With the newness rubbed off the sound I think we are going to have a winner. Images like gangbusters and sounds quite dynamic.
We'll see all y'all around 1.
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We counted a total of 20 peeps at the meet yesterday. I had a really nice time! Great to see newer faces as well as a lot of the old crew. And the projects were most impressive. I had a pair of the new speakers running after finishing the second one at 6pm the night before (thanks, JR, for getting that cabinet to us in such a timely fashion!). Josh set the system up to run them in overnight so we didn't have to suffer through the first few hours of speaker break in on the new right channel box and wiring. By morning they had settled in pretty well.
We started with a Kaiju running the speakers. No problem running nice and loud in our 19' x 25' x 14' room. Bass is quite adequate. The horns are a bit directional. So they throw a great image when you sit on the centerline between them, and as you sit more off axis the image is a little more diffuse. Not a bad thing in the typical living room that tends to be a bit on the bright and reflective side. The tonal balance holds up nicely and they sound good from a variety of listening positions. It's hard to objectively judge a project you have been immersed in for several weeks. Your point of reference gets muddled. So I was delighted to hear a few folks say they planned to order a pair after hearing them.
Next up was Mike's recently completed Stereomour II, sporting all Psvane tubes. Mike did a gorgeous build and the amp was dead quiet with that lovely neutral, natural 2A3 sound. The 3.5 watts was plenty of power for the speakers. We did have to boost the signal coming out of his portable player a bit to get enough drive for the amp. I added a Quickie in the chain, effectively giving him a tube output from his source. Sounded pretty darned good!
Next I switched in the new S.E.X. amp, which uses the 6FJ7 tube. Sounded very nice though perhaps not my first choice for running the new speakers in that big room, as the amp would clip a bit in the bass region when trying to crank up the tunes to max output. At more modest levels it sounded very good. And dead quiet. This amp is much more quiet than the previous iteration of S.E.X. and I hope it will be considered a nice step forward in the evolution of our very first product.
Next up was Aaron's big, beautiful insanely wild headphone amp. He worked this one out with PJ and PB to create an amp that could run both dynamic and electrostatic headphones. It uses a choice of 6SN7, 6J5 or 2C22 driver tubes and 71A output tubes, which run into MQ TL-404 autoformers for the dynamic cans. Aaron brought his STAX cans and Jim had some HD800s handy, so we got to hear both. They were each different and both delightful, particularly listening to some amazing recordings of Cuban music that Jim has made recently that will be coming out on HDtracks soon.
Following that was a really pretty pair pair of hunky monoblocks that PB had cooked up, using a 6550 cathode follower to drive a - hmm, was that an 811A? - in deep class A2 for about 15 watts. Very punchy drive, great amps for rocking out.
The final amp of the day was a monster. PJ and Ed had collaborated on taking a stab at a high power amp that might become a future Bottlehead product. There have been attempts at this in the past, but none were giving us what we hoped to hear.
Well that was not the case yesterday. The monster monoblock, which uses 2X4s for the wood base and weighs 70 lbs., runs four 6550s in parallel single ended configuration, driven by an el84. Output is about 50 watts. Feedback is minimal and just around the output stage, similar to the Seductor amp. Ed's build was lovely as usual and the amp was affectionately labeled Big Betty. Even with just one amp running both speakers in mono the sound made me sit up and take notice. The bass is amazing. Ed says the amp measured super linear right up to 50 watts, and with the 93dB sensitive speakers there was not even a remote sign of stress in the bass when the amp was cranked. The top end was nice from the get-go, though right at first I thought the upper midrange was a little veiled. That really surprised me as I was expecting a kind of unrefined sound, but it was more a sin of omission. Which then became a moot point as the amp warmed up and the midrange opened up quite nicely. It's good enough that when I was asked whether it was worth building the second channel I said yes, please!
I truly appreciate the effort everyone made to make the meet and to bring such well developed projects. Josh took a few pics and maybe he will post some here. You guys set a very high bar for future meets! We had a very brief discussion about future meets as some of the guys were headed out. The consensus was monthly might be a bit too often for everyone to try to have something new and different to hear. We're tossing around the notion of meeting every other month or perhaps quarterly. I'd be interested to hear what you guys think about that.
And that is not to say that there won't be other things going on here at BHQ on the odd months. When I got home last night I had a message from Jacqui Naylor asking if we might be able to host a show at BHQ in early December. Heck yeah! I'm hoping to be able to flesh out a 2017 show schedule with some really great up and coming local artists too.
Thanks hugely to the BH crew for helping get this meet together. The entire crew worked very hard to get things ready for the meet, with Eileen and Josh making sure we had all the stuff we needed and then cleaning and organizing all day and Kelvin hammering away at every crazy last minute solder job I was requesting. You guys are the best.
Thanks also to Shannon Parks of Parks Audio for bringing by a gigantic bag full of primo Nichicon 'lytic caps for everyone to help themselves to. Around that gang it was like throwing a bag of candy on the table! And thanks to those who brought edible goodies. The snacks were well received. You guys did a good job of consuming them and keeping me from ODing on the leftovers today.
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Jealous from across the country! It's great VALVE is revived - lots of inspiration! Where can we get details of Aaron's headphone amp?
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Dan, you summed the afternoon up nicely! It sure didn’t feel like 5-6 hour and I’m looking forward to future meets.
The new speakers needed breaking in but have potential. They really lock in when you’re in the sweet spot and have an impressive amount of bass though the volume was much higher than I’m used to at home. They have no problem playing loud with the Kaiju if anyone is wondering.
PB’s amps were really nice looking builds and that 811A glows beautifully! Ed’s build was a beast and I look forward to hearing them (not lifting them) as a stereo pair. It was nice to see the SEX isn’t going anywhere and didn’t change drastically. The highlight of the evening for me was Jim’s recordings. Closing my eyes, I could picture sitting in a café listening to those ladies sing and could listen to them for hours.
I was very thankful for the collective brain trust and their help on my little Heathkit project (miss step). At a future meet they will return in corrected form. It’s a lot of fun having that many years of audio experience (listening, designing, building) in one place.
A big thank you to PB for trouble shooting some 120Hz noise in my headphone amp. Another thank you to Shannon for the caps! And a special thank you to Eileen, Josh and Kelvin for setting up the event and keeping it going. Next time I’ll bring some food in addition to audio projects. Maybe we could do a BBQ in the parking lot next year when the rain stops?
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Three pictures from the show. I get easily distracted so only grabbed a few.
First is Dan futzing with the new SEX with Aaron's build on deck to the left.
Then PB's creation.
And finally the giant monster.
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Would love for anyone who attended to post impressions of the meet. There are a lot of folks at a distance who can't make them and would love to know how it went. I can post a recap, but that's just one opinion.