Any new products on the drawing board?

[Doc B.]

I can share that we are working on a new power transformer design for it. What we used in the prototype is a bit of overkill and not necessarily the most efficient choice. It is in the early stages and we will need to try some things before we settle on a final design. This is currently in process (literally - emails with our winder this morning) so hopefully won't take too terribly long to develop. That said, the output iron is well developed and we have a small production run of those on the shelf.

[dth31]

I can share that we are working on a new power transformer design for it. What we used in the prototype is a bit of overkill and not necessarily the most efficient choice. It is in the early stages and we will need to try some things before we settle on a final design. This is currently in process (literally - emails with our winder this morning) so hopefully won't take too terribly long to develop. That said, the output iron is well developed and we have a small production run of those on the shelf.

That is good news! Thanks for sharing.

[Cary]

Can you tell us a little more on the SEX 4.0?

[Paul Birkeland]

Can you tell us a little more on the SEX 4.0?

With the dwindling supply of 6FJ7s and 6DN7s, we are obviously moving to a different tube.  The benefit of this tube is that we can squeeze a bit more power out of it but the downside is that the Miller capacitance is high enough that we will need to do away with the volume pot.   While the original SEX amp was a pair of inexpensive monoblocks that got tons and tons of modifications published for it in the subsequent years, we have kind of lost that facet of the SEX amp with more recent iterations.  In large part I would offer the excuse that a low noise tube headphone amp isn't generally all that flexible when it comes to circuit modifications.  Anyway, the prototype I have here looks to be configurable in 2-3 different modes to trade overall gain for extra power, and we'd like to just build that into the parts provided with the stock kit.  We do retain the headphone jack as well, but you'll need to use the level control on your source.  The lack of a volume control also makes this a very nice companion product to the Moreplay preamp. 

[Cary]

Thanks Paul for the info!

Cary

[AG]

We got a good 2/3 of the Moreplay upgrade manual done today. We will finish up the photo shoot of the assembly next weekend, after some new PC boards arrive.

Hi,
Any news regarding the upgrade?
thank you
AG.

[Paul Birkeland]

Hi,
Any news regarding the upgrade?
thank you
AG.

Dan is getting close to finishing the manual, and I'm getting close to wrapping up a bill of materials.  The large order for PC boards we did arrived, so those are ready to go too.

[Doc B.]

Yes, I have been working away at it and the manual is about 3/4 complete. We have a busy week ahead of us and the manual will probably get wrapped up next week.

[Wvanwagoner]

Will the new S.E.X 4 be a single triode design?

[Paul Birkeland]

Will the new S.E.X 4 be a single triode design?

No.

[dth31]

"Winding down" is much more about Eileen and I than it is about Bottlehead. The company is chugging right along and there are lots of new possibilities on the horizon. I'm headed to PB's tomorrow to finish up the Moreplay upgrade manual shoot. We also have the replacement for the S.E.X. amp 3.0 coming soon. S.E.X. 4.0 will go back to our roots and be a pair of monoblock amps that will go great with the Moreplay. We also have the big 805A amps that I have been running for a while now, that will be the highest powered (and perhaps the best sounding) amp kit we have ever done. We will be talking about some other product ideas tomorrow as well.

Back in September, Doc mentioned that a new 805A amp was in development. Anything you can update us on?

[Paul Birkeland]

Back in September, Doc mentioned that a new 805A amp was in development. Anything you can update us on?

I'm happy to provide any information that the bosses feel is appropriate!

[dth31]

🤞🤗

[Paul Birkeland]

For the big amp, I would mention that we are accumulating parts for that release, but we haven't started on the manual and we are still waiting for a few parts to arrive in order to do so. 

The new SEX amp will come first, since that development work is about complete, and we need a replacement for the old SEX amp more urgently. 

-PB

[dth31]

Commitment! That’s great to hear. And doesn’t sound like it will be too far off.  Looking forward to the release. Thanks PB!