New Crack Owner (Narrow Sound Stage)

glwinthedrk · 993

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Offline glwinthedrk

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on: February 17, 2014, 12:04:56 PM
Hello everyone,

Finally after a year of having the parts for my crack, I got around to building it!!
Was surprised I was able to get all the wiring done, and get it running in 1 afternoon (a couple of hours or four, and 2 beers later actually).
This was my first time using a soldering iron to build any type of circuit, and my first DIY. (I once soldered a broken cable before, but that's about it.) Now here is the issue I am having, which leads me to believe I might have messed something up.
The sound stage I am getting from my crack amp is very narrow. I can hardly tell the difference between a mono signal and the stereo signal.
I noticed a lot of the high frequency content is gone (this may be due to the tubes?? but im not sure..).
The amp sounds dark, and has a pleasant distortion at the lower frequencies.
I NOW understand what people mean when they say tube warmth.
The low frequencies have this sort of grit to them that just wasn't there before, but cant seem to understand why the sound stage sounds so narrow and why so much of the HF content sounds rolled off.

Headphones im using are Senn. HD650's. before acquiring the crack i was using a M-Audio Profire 2626's headphone amp with my HD650's and the sound wasn't as warm, but there was a lot more clarity than I am getting with my crack amp.

Help me out here.
Thanks.  ;D



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #1 on: February 17, 2014, 05:27:03 PM
Were the voltages all roughly in-spec?

Shiny solder joints will generally make an amp sound a bit better.

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man