Quickie Christmas

[Alonzo]

So I was going to be a good little elf and for Christmas, build my brother a Quickie HeadPhone Amp for his office.  He's a Philadelphia Eagles fan (I know, I know but you can only teach the little brother so much) and Queenie was nice enough to send me a great Green chassis.
Well sometimes rushing isn't good at all.  Guess I put too much pressure on the drill when adding the hole for the headphone jack.  See the shattered pieces.  Everyone, please wear safety goggles when drilling even this light weight material.  I had little pieces flying everywhere, glad I had mine on.
Check out the broken parts and the "Plan B".  It is setup for some 32 ohm headphones I picked up from Monoprice, they sound great.

[Alonzo]

Plan B.

[Chris]

Oh NO... you broke the green plate!!! ... Now , the Eagles season is jinxed for sure!..... Don't tell your brother....

[4krow]

That is one clean build. I forgot, what did you use for the base?

[Wanderer]

..........It is setup for some 32 ohm headphones I picked up from Monoprice, they sound great.

So how did you configure the Quickie to work with 32 ohm phones?

What do you think of the Quickie sound with phones? I like mine but find the bass starts rolling off below 50 hz or so. This with the "old" Specos into AKG 240m (600 ohms).     

[earwaxxer]

Yep drilling acrylic! I found that out when I was modding my maggies. I used black acrylic to replace the back plates. Drill small holes then increase the size gradually. The bit tends to 'seize' and all hell breaks loose!

[Paul Birkeland]

You don't need to step the hole sizes up for acrylic.

I can see that you put all the hardware on, then tried to drill the plate.  With no support under where you are adding the hole, the plate is somewhat likely to break.

The acrylic that I use when making the Quickie plates is cast acrylic, so it is relatively easy to machine.

-PB

[4krow]

I know that it may not help with the Quickie, but when drilling potentially brittle medium, I like using stepped bit.

[Alonzo]

The sound from this setup is good, no loss of bass at all.  I used Paul J's notes from the forum to set up my old style Speco's as autoformers.  Paul's directions work well for the 32 ohm headphones I'm sending.  The base is a normal bottlehead supply painted with stone flecks.  It's neutral enough to fit my sister in laws decorations if he decides not to take this to his office. 
For drilling I used a step bit, then a dremel to finish due to the odd shape of he Neutrik plug.  I wanted to eyeball the position between the RCA's so I installed them first.  My mistake was to not use a pilot hole and working too quickly.  On the second try, I drilled a pilot hole, took my time and everything worked out well.

And you can't put the blame of there disaster season on me, they were hexed long before I broke there mirror...

[Wormwood]

Alonzo,


A great looking build you have there.

May I ask for you to expand on the headphone installation - I have yet to receive mine and was thinking of doing the same to it (minus the cracking of the faceplate). What type of headphones are you using with this - brand?


Cheers,
Stephen

[Alonzo]

Sure,
Mine is an upgrade from a working Quickie with PJCCS.  Going from scratch I would do the same, get it working completely the way you want as normal, then add the headphone outputs and connection.  Less to troubleshoot if you have problems.
I used this guide: http://www.bottlehead.com/smf/index.php/topic,2.0.html; located on the main page of the Quickie section (google Quickie headphone if the pictures don't show up in the forum).
I had the old Speco's in a box so that's what I used.  Paul shows the hookup schematic for both the old and the new design Speco's.  Schematic below.
I tried different connections to the Quickie output and settled on the brown (0.625w) connection.  It gave the best sound (not the most volume, but the best to me).  I left the others available in case my brother disagrees.
The connection is simple; brown wire to Quickie output jack; same side black wire joined to 8 ohm wire, that combination to the ring for the right side  transformer, tip for the left transformer.  Black (0 ohm) to ground jack.  This worked for the headphones I'm sending from Monoprice.  They got a good review from CNET and are inexpensive.  For sh*** and giggles I tried the red wire to ring and tip with the black and white wire connected, to use my Sennheiser's.  Sounded great but didnt' have a large volume range.

[Alonzo]

Interior view:  kinda crowded, should've put in some bypass caps when I had it open...

[Chris]

"And you can't put the blame of there disaster season on me, they were hexed long before I broke there mirror"........  HaHa ok, fair enough...

[Wormwood]

Alonzo,

That is brilliant and esp. for the tip to use Google to access the pictures.

Now to track down the supplies for this.


Thanks once again!

Stephen