Silence at Mainline!!

[adydula]

No new posts since Dec 22.

Hmmmm, must be Mainllines are just working and working well!!  lol...

Its my daily driver and is still worng very well here in North Carolina!

Happy New Year Mainline folks!

Alex

[jtori]

Lovin' mine!  I agree, though.  The silence is deafening.  I wonder just how large the installed base of Mainlines is.  Judging purely on the basis of activity in forums, I would guess the number of Cracks in service is many multiples greater. 

With the Crack, I think I've found my magic combo:  Speedballed Crack + ZMF Auteur.  Would be interested to hear members' impressions with regard to the Mainline.

Best,

Joe.

[adydula]

I have a crack as well and I am sure due to the price difference there are more cracks out there than mainlines....it takes a real serious person tospend $1000 or so on an amplifier for headphones for sure.

When I started out in this being and older guy....that grew up with vacuum tubes and have built so many SS amps and older tube gear, it didnt take me long to want to try this amp,just to see how well it works.

I have not been disappointed, I have 10+ HP amps and this one is the king of the hill. Some others are close but the Mainline has a very special quality and works so wonderfully.

and unlike many other tube amps there is no real need for chasing the mega buck NOS tube...the way its designed and with the stock tubes its a true winner IMO.

Alex

[Doc B.]

Considering that Mainline is on sale this week we can only hope that plenty of  people are looking at this thread. Crack does outsell Mainline by a large margin. What is interesting is that most Mainline owners built a Crack first then stepped up to the Mainline. One might assume that others would see this pattern and that some of them might go straight to buying a Mainline kit. I'm not sure of the spread, but I think the Crack to Mainline route is quite a bit more common.

[Larpy]

I listened to headphones through a Wheatfield HA-2 (Pete Millett's first foray into commercial headphone amps) for 20 years before I built my Mainline (a year ago).  I now use both of them.

These two amps are apples and oranges and sound nothing alike:  the Wheatfield is old-school tubey lushness and the Mainline is speed and resolution.  The Mainline wakes up my Audeze LCD-2s and the Wheatfield warms up my Sennheiser HD800s.

Here's why I'm telling you all this:  the Crack seems to be a simpler version of the Wheatfield HA-2: no choke and a 12AU7 instead of a 6SN7 as a driver, but otherwise pretty similar (at least from what I can tell without owning one).  I sometimes wonder if some people (me?) might prefer the Crackatwoa to the Mainline because there's something magical (well, lusher and warmer) about using the 6AS7/6080 as a cathode follower for headphones.  I've searched the forums and, as far as I can tell, no one has compared the Crack/Crackatwoa to the Wheatfield (which, to be fair, only sold a few dozen before Pete Millett closed down the business), but at least on paper the Crackatwoa looks like it might be a Wheatfield-Mainline mash-up--in other words, a Crack with a state of the art power supply.

If so, I can see some folks finding the Crackatwoa's sonics preferable to the Mainline's.

Not that I'm discouraging anyone from taking advantage of the Mainline sale.  But it'd be interesting to hear from people who have built(or listened to) both the Crackatwoa and the Mainline.

[Paul Birkeland]

I actually  drooled pretty hard over the old Wheatfield stuff back in the day, but I remember the prices seeming high at the time.  Knowing now that Pete was hand building the first few batches, I wish I had bought one anyway.  The HA-2 was certainly an inspiration for the early Crack prototypes that I built around 2003.  The circuits don't look that different, but the operating points are miles apart (not a good or a bad thing, I suspect Pete was dealing with the available high voltage power transformer windings that were common enough to get, while the original Foreplay III power transformer had a weird 160V winding that happened to be pretty solid for a lower voltage operating point).

The HA-2 is neither regulated, nor does it offer current source loads.  It is essentially a Crack with a tube rectified power supply and a hotter operating point for both the 6080 and 6SN7.  It would not surprise me if it sounded a bit better than the stock Crack due to its juicier operating points, but at the same time we collectively at Bottlehead are not generally happy with the sonics from a tube rectified power supply.  It would be a toasty little amp with those operating points though!  HV regulation and constant current sources are both technologies that Pete has since experimented with.  He has published some good information on these topics that I have linked to over the years frequently. 

He's a super nice guy if you ever get the chance to meet him. 

[Raymond P.]

I"m one of those who took the Crack to Mainline route and am very glad I did. They complement each other very well, offering different, but equally enjoyable sound sure to satisfy any kind of listening mood. I'm also curious about the Crack-a-two-a sound and wonder if it offers a mid-point between the Crack and Mainline. I guess the best way to find out is to build one, but I currently don't have a good listening station to put it.

[JamieMcC]

Yes Crack first (well several actually) a Quickie a Sex then a Mainline and Eros. 

That first Crack was quiet a daunting prospect as someone who had never soldered or used a multi-meter before.
 
I will probably do a Stereomour or Kaiju at some point but living across the pond in the UK the dismal exchange rate and high cost of shipping/importing has but the brakes on these ambitions for the time being.

If there are any pics of that first Crack prototype around it would be neat to see the very beginnings of the Crack.

[adydula]

Sale!!

My goodness, if anyone out there is thinking of building a Mainline and there is a sale going on...gosh please do yourself a favor and just do it!!

There their's my advert push for the Mainline!!! (smile)...

Pix of early breadboard or development builds of products like crack and mainline would be neat to see...and any stories of the "bumps' in the road to the present design would be neat wthout spilling the beans...

Alex

[Paul Birkeland]

Here's the first one.  I was really active on a now defunct audio forum, and one of the members really wanted a tube headphone amp and convinced me to make one for him.  I built this really ugly prototype before I built him his. 

[Paul Birkeland]

This was the final version of his amp.

[Doc B.]

I can't remember if PB built a prototype that looked different than the production Mainline or if that layout was used right from the start. I do remember having to convince he and PJ to give the 6C45pi transformer output design a chance. Glad they were willing to work on it.

[Paul Birkeland]

Oh yeah, I'm sure I have photos of the Purple Wonder floating around somewhere.  Of course Doc B. really built the first 2 Mainlines, but with no considerations for kit production.

[Doc B.]

Oh yeah, forgot about the first one I built. I might have a pic somewhere. Man, that was like 15 years ago. With all that is going on these days I can barely remember what I had for breakfast.

[jtori]

I'm also a Crack-to-Mainline guy.  There is no question the Crack (both Speedballed and non) has a distinct character.  It just sounds alive and musical, especially when paired with certain headphones.  In my case it's the ZMF Auteurs and HD600s.  The Mainline is just plain quiet, clean, tight, smooth and controlled.  To me, however, it doesn't have a distinct sonic character.  I like that it will drive just about anything and that it is conservatively designed.  Neither of my amps is going anywhere.  In fact, I sold my Cary HH-1 and Burson Soloist SL.  I'm still searching, though, for that magical headphone pairing for the Mainline.  I don't know yet what that is.  Right now I'm using it primarily with Audeze LCD2Cs and the ZMF Auteurs.  I've still got my eyes on the HD800, HD800S and (more recently) the Meze Empyrean.

In the end, both the Crack and Mainline are exceptional pieces of gear, which I'd recommend unreservedly to anyone interested in achieving great sound.

Best,

Joe.