New Crack

[borism]

After completing the Stereomour in March I guess I was hooked. So, when my wife gave me the Sennheiser 650s for my birthday I decided to build the Crack. The kit arrived a few weeks ago. I build the base last week and today I sat down and completed it. Just made a few changes including Vampire RCA, Goldpoint stepped attenuator and silver coated, teflon wire.
All resistance and voltage checks turned out fine and as I am writing the music is wonderful. No noise of any kind, just beautiful sound.
A few pictures:
(http://) 

[John EH]

Nice job!  I'm always appreciative when people post that they got the kit and built it with no issues.  I think it helps the community as a whole attract new Crack-Heads. 

Nice build.  One recommendation.  I put a right angle adapter on my headphone jack because I was worried about cable strain.

Congrats on the successful build. 

[borism]

Thanks! This is only my second build. I'll look into getting a right angle adapter.

One observation regarding teflon coated wire. I used the same #20 as the kit comes with. The teflon wire is thinner (the insulation is thinner) and therefore there is much more room to work with (for example around the small tube socket). The only issue is that on short wire pieces the whole insulation can easily slide off, so one has to be careful.

[Grainger49]

Boris,

You make a good point about the wire size and insulation size.  The large, thick insulation wire got burned often.  The shots of completed kits showed everywhere the soldering iron touched.  The Teflon insulation is much more rugged and forgiving.

[borism]

A quick update. I replaced the original kit tubes with a Chatham 5998 and a Mullard 12au7. After a day, this sounds so sweet that I am questioning upgrading with the speedball that I also got.

Thanks Bottlehead for this treat!

[borism]

Excitement! Just completed the Speedball upgrade and everything checked out right. So, music is playing.

I have to admit that it was scary to take apart a working amp that was sounding great and not knowing if it would still be playing music afterwards. It's to early for an evaluation of changes but it may have opened up some. I guess, I'll have plenty of time.

[Karl5150]

Nice work Boris. I have also hesitated with the Speedball upgrade, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. Maybe your success will be the push I need.

[borism]

Apparently to much time on my hands, so I upgraded the output caps with JFX film types and then added Russian teflon bypass caps (thanks to JamieMcC and his posts).

The JFX caps were smooth from the beginning and seemed to provide an improvement over the electrolytic caps though the tube upgrades and the speedball was much more noticeable.

The teflon caps without prior burn in have added detail and some glare and I hope this will settle with burn-in. Any idea how long this may take?

This is what it looks like:

[JamieMcC]

Apparently to much time on my hands, so I upgraded the output caps with JFX film types and then added Russian teflon bypass caps (thanks to JamieMcC and his posts).

The JFX caps were smooth from the beginning and seemed to provide an improvement over the electrolytic caps though the tube upgrades and the speedball was much more noticeable.

The teflon caps without prior burn in have added detail and some glare and I hope this will settle with burn-in. Any idea how long this may take?

This is what it looks like:

I set the music library on shuffle and repeat then left my Crack playing for 7 days and it was job done 8-)
I used a old 6080 and 12au7  and the pair of elcheapo headphones that I just use for testing after making any circuit changes.