Built my Crack and Now Need a Speedball for my Next Trick!

[anthonynchandler]

Spent almost a year building my Crack; I notoriously want to rush, so I spent a LONG time letting the spray paint and primer dry. Then I had to be calm enough to finish the second section of the soldering, so I waited. I have to say, I am proud of this build. My father was an electronics technician for his whole life and I felt that he would have finally been proud of me now that I am 50 years old! Ha ha ha.
I have this running with a Peachtree Audio Nova fed by a RP4 for Roon out to Senn HD6xx headphones and...the sound is glorious. 192khz files of Pink Floyd's "Animals" or Muddy Waters' "Folk Singer" came alive. I tried it in my main system, with less success (probably my sound flow with the AudioLab 6000A and the Pro-Ject turntable).
I am loading the PCB for the Speedball now, but had to order thinner 0.31 Kester solder over the 0.50 I used for the point to point work. I am reluctant to risk the sound, but I guess I can always go back if I am not a fan of the Speedball.
I want to build another kit for 2024, but am not sure if a Moreplay or an Eros 2 would be best as a second kit. Any thoughts? I am going with pink for the aluminum plate: sort of going with 1950s Fender Stratocaster colours.
Thanks for this forum. I love reading what is written here!

[Deluk]

That must be Sky-Blue Pink. Nice build.

[anthonynchandler]

Ha ha ha, no the NEXT build will be pink!
And thank you!

[Mucker]

Very nice work ... great job! That Blue is really cool!

I built my first Crack with Speedball back ~ 2015 and then built an S.E.X. 3.0, a second Crack/SB, Moreplay, and just finished a loaded Stereomour II.

The Moreplay has a nice layout with plenty of room and is relatively easy.

The S3X and the Stereomour gets a bit more congested and a bit trickier with the chokes and OT's, but with patience goes together very nicely.

The manuals are so well written, as you already know, following them to a tee without short cutting makes it a piece of cake for fitment. BH did all the hard work figuring out the wire and component lead lengths required.

I am certain you could get through any of the builds just fine, it will really boil down to what you need next in your audio endevours and the equipment you have or plan to pair with it.

It is sure satisfying as you say to end up with a finished project. I've enjoyed every step of the way and won't give up any of my gear ever. Best wishes and enjoy your Crack!

[hmbscott]

Nice neat build. Love the colorful chassis choices. I am a big fan of whimsical!

Following my first taste of Crack then Speedball, I built an Eros 2, which is a lot more components, four tubes, and three PC boards, but not really harder, just more. I followed it with a Moreplay, which is a simpler circuit than the Eros, two tubes, no PC boards, but does have a lot of slightly confusing interconnect soldering with the input selector, balance and volume. So both the Eros and Moreplay are more complex than the Crack & Speedball, not harder, just more. I'm in the midst of a heavily modified Stereomour build, still prepping the chassis, not far into it yet. I recommend picking the component you expect to get the most use from next.

Crack vs Crack & Speedball impressions: I felt the naked Crack was a bit warmer, maybe a bit lusher sounding. Speedball tightened it up, not as much of a lush, more sober sounding;). I miss the lush a bit, but also appreciate the accurate sober sounding speedball. Exquisitely pairs with HD650's.

[Thermioniclife]

In regards to speedball I liked the small board but not so much after the large board. I've moved on to the c2a and then the mainline so the crack is a little lonely. I will probably remove the large board from my crack as a keep busy project. After the large board install I agree that the sound got pretty sterile. Just one old mans opinion.

[Paul Birkeland]

The big board allows more power from the output stage to be delivered to the headphones, as the output signal current doesn't have to be shared with a 3K resistor.  It would be surprising to find the large board having any kind of negative impact. 

[anthonynchandler]

Hmmm, I was a little worried that the "sterile" or "colder" overtones would come into play as the sound tightens up from the Speedball upgrade. I mean it sounds sooo good right now, and too much icing can ruin a cake! But it want to do the solder work and learn from the PCB project aspect. This is a "relaxation project" as a bit of therapy and mindfulness, so in the end I can always take a step back and degrade back to the original. But then again, in my system it might play nicely.
I think I will need to consider which build might work best with my main system before I choose.
I have some tubes coming in to roll for this unit (and I would hate to suddenly find the power tube impossible to procure).
My main system is an AudioLab 6000a and CD transport, a Pro-Ject Carbon turntable and a Pro-ject Tube Box phono preamp, a RP4 streamer and Klipsch Heresy iv speakers. The Moreplay or the Eros might work, but somehow I feel like the Eros would be more of an upgrade.
Oh well. No rush. I do enjoy hearing about your experiences though!

[Karl5150]

Your patience paid off, that is a good looking build, & a nice color choice.
Enjoy the tunes,
Karl

[Mucker]

FWIW and respectfully, I don't find my loaded Crack with SB to be anywhere near cold and sterile, but instead warm and lucious. A tiny amplifier with huge sound IMO, simply incredible with vinyl playback.

[Paul Birkeland]

I recently collected some data on the kind of impact the small C4S board in the Crack has on triode operation.  The top here is a resistively loaded triode and under it is the same triode and the same operating point with a CCS.  You can observe that the second harmonic (what we refer to as the pleasant tube sound) is almost identical between the two, but the C4S loading has shoved out almost all of the higher order grunge and the third harmonic (not such pleasant distortion) has been reduced by 45dB and is almost invisible.  All those spikes beyond the third harmonic (3kHz) are higher order distortion that you really, really, really don't want in any quantity if at all possible, as they are rather unpleasant to the ears and come across as harshness. 

[Doc B.]

Nicely done.

[anthonynchandler]

FWIW and respectfully, I don't find my loaded Crack with SB to be anywhere near cold and sterile, but instead warm and lucious. A tiny amplifier with huge sound IMO, simply incredible with vinyl playback.

Where do you put it in the vinyl chain? Post- phono preamp or out through the amp?

[hmbscott]

Crack vs Crack & Speedball impressions: I felt the naked Crack was a bit warmer, maybe a bit lusher sounding. Speedball tightened it up, not as much of a lush, more sober sounding;). I miss the lush a bit, but also appreciate the accurate sober sounding speedball. Exquisitely pairs with HD650's.

I hope my impressions didn't leave anyone with the idea that I found the C+SB sterile sounding. What I meant is that the SB adds control and accuracy. The naked Crack is looser sounding, which has its own appeal. Both are more engaging and richly lush sounding than my other headphone amp, the Nitsch Mani Piety, which Nitsch describes as: "A rich-sounding solid state amp with tube-like characteristics." The Piety is nice and all, but it's no Crack!

I have my Crack being driven by the second output of my MorePlay (preamp), driven by my Eros 2 (phono Pre) or my Aries 2 DAC.

[Mucker]

Where do you put it in the vinyl chain? Post- phono preamp or out through the amp?

It changes month to month but currently this is my vinyl setup:

Custom (external power) Technics SL-1210M5G with Jelco TS-550S tonearm, Orsonic headshell with DL-103R in a Paradox Pulse body -------> Audio Technica AT700T Step up transformer 1:20 --------> Hagerman Trumpet MC phono stage (48dB/47K) --------> Bottlehead Crack/SB with Beyerdynamic DT-1990 Pro phones or Senn HD-600.

The volume position sits about 10 o"clock ..... perfect volume and not overly loud. Crazy good for me.

I am working on getting my vinyl system connected to my Moreplay / Stereomour but have a space issue currently.