Wanted - First Watt F5 good DIY build

[montesquieu]

Tim Rawson iirc Gordan ... I remember reading about his amps. The thrust seemed to be that the diy community had an issue with him profiting from the pass schematic that had been released for the benefit of self builders

Doesn't sound like he was profiteering to me. $500?

But it can be pretty unpleasant over there.

[Bksabath]

For what I know the Rawson where made whit same serious cost cutting cheap transformers and so on
The big fuss about it was that Nelson Pass give the design and help the community for free, is only reward was to get people like me to give it a go, to have some one to make dozens of amplifiers to sale and make a living out of it, not getting in the cheap and nasty components, is baaaaaaaaaaad.

If I was ever to sell my F5 or build one for a friend I would first ask Nelson permission.

He is such a nice bloke believe me, and that is why, the like of Mr Rawson had an hard time.

One thing is for sure Diyaudio is really unpleasant at times...

Why not go there any way and have a look at the Build guide they also have transistor kits and PCB all one need is a soldering Iron a Drill and couple of Multymeters to build one

[anubisgrau]

For what I know the Rawson where made whit same serious cost cutting cheap transformers and so on
The big fuss about it was that Nelson Pass give the design and help the community for free, is only reward was to get people like me to give it a go, to have some one to make dozens of amplifiers to sale and make a living out of it, not getting in the cheap and nasty components, is baaaaaaaaaaad.

If I was ever to sell my F5 or build one for a friend I would first ask Nelson permission.

He is such a nice bloke believe me, and that is why, the like of Mr Rawson had an hard time.

One thing is for sure Diyaudio is really unpleasant at times...

Why not go there any way and have a look at the Build guide they also have transistor kits and PCB all one need is a soldering Iron a Drill and couple of Multymeters to build one

When I bought F3 direct from Tim Rawson I wasn't aware of the issue, neither I knew he's making a bit of living on it. But his margin is small, super-small, say 5-10% tops, if. I was actually caught once in a longer discussion with him where he explained that building amps is a kind of a therapy for him. I didn't want to go deeper but I understood his point.

However the forum rant against him was an amazing pile of shi*te of ultimate level - it's a forum where for example Peter Daniel who knocked down a few amazing commercial products - much more innovative and ground breaking than anything NP ever did - like Shigaraki transport, Gaincard amp etc, selling copies or his versions for living with a hefty profit is revered as god. And Tim Rawson is criminal

The story about cheap and dangerous parts, repeated here, at least in the case of my F3 is a total bullshit that DIY-ers invented to ruin his work - my amp had Plitron trafo who was 100% similar to the one that NP uses in his stock F3, same boards, same Panasonic caps in filtration. If he did cuts, it was on chasis and coolers, which he cut himself from big pieces of metal, didn't anodize alu front and top plates etc - it was functional but bare ugly, you could see where his saw went.

DIY community is really not high on moral standards and the campaign was actually led by the people who had their own business via forum. Only later their motivation became obvious but it was too late for Tim. He was too cheap.

Frankly I haven't seen his amps for a long time for sale since he retreated after that storm. I am sure the owners keep them, the guy whom I passed on mine regularly calls me once per year to tell me the amp is still playing as on the first day and to thank me for selling it.

I'm sure Tim would build an amp as per request, only I have no idea how to find his contact nowadays.

[anubisgrau]

It seems the units appear for sale though seldom, like once per year or so. The last one, F5 for $400

http://www.usaudiomart.com/details/6...im-rawson-amp/

[sjs]

I have one of the DiyAudio Pass VFET kits , but at the moment it's somewhere down my very long "to do" list, so unfortunately it's not built