my everchanging sytem !!!
hi my names is james and here is my ever changing system!!
my homebuild valve amp (from a kit) based on a st70 push pull amp using KT66 ouput valves(better for bass I'm told) and some 12at7 driver tubes the one in the centre is the most critical ( I found this after much experimentation ) A good one here dictates how good the overall output is . Presently it's a GE valve from the 50's but I have a few old mullards I like to put in sometimes!
The clear Kt66's are reproduction ones the grey one and black one are ones i accquired in a lot that i thought were broken but to my susprise they worked - I can't really tell the difference in sound between the old and new!
The output 'A' and 'B' (you can see the 'A'in one of the pictures) is painted on and took an age to get right !!
here's a picture of my beresford with her top off very sexy!!
I have upgraded al the 100uF and 47uF caps only the 220uF 's to go the sound is a little better . I intially changed the op-amp but took it out to try the old one again I must really put the top on it again(well once the other caps are changed!)
here's a bit of a close up of the cap upgrades!
I use a simple tone control which i built. at present i need something interesting to put it in any ideas???
the leads are all home made from SKY satelitte co-axial . I coudn't believe how much so-called audio cables were throttling my bass response in my setup, the difference was night and day and I would advise people to be very careful with leads they could be holding back your whole system!
at the minute i'm using my old trusty Marantz cd52 Mkii but this will be upgrade to a tweaked phillips cd950 just as soon as i get the time to transform it into a better transport(hopefully over xmas)
my homemade speakers are here , I haven't given them a paint job just yet! I'm still deciding on the colour (any suggestions?) They are 8 inch full range drivers witha frequency response of about 44Hz-28khz so no need for multiple speakers and nasty signal distorting crossover networks! they are only rated to about 30W but in this enclosure they have an efficency of about 106dB/W ( my monitor audio's were about 95)
The enclosure is about a metre high - these are huge speakers !!But Very very clear!
As i Finally get them finished i'll post more pictures here!
Some peope may have noticed this lurking in the background of other pictures! My tascam 1/4 inch reel to reel player !!!
What a bit of Kit
Its presently not in use due to excessive hiss but i reckon thats the power caps, which are probably as old as me, and are on the list of things to do!!
It gets the girlies going !!
Now for the bit of kit that forms the back bone of my whole system it is valued very highly by some corners of the hi fi fraternity ! For me I can't remember what my system sounded like before but with it in it still sounds great plus this offers surge protection so its staying!!
Yep some of you might have guessed by now but its a mains conditioner(home made of course)!
PLEASE PEASE DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME IF YA DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING IT HAS THE POTENTIAL (excuse the pun) TO KILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what's in it? 10 varistors for surge protection , balanced inductors and caps networks for RF filtering ! All the outlets are switched live and neutral (double pole) -why? This is a must for filtering-any piece of equipment, when not in use, can be isolated completely from the network - any one using a mains filter should unplug anything not in use as it will affect the overall performance of the filtering .
Well folks there it is my system - its definitely not finished yet - I still have my 6SN7GT(valve) based pre-amp to reassemble but the beresford is doing that function at the minute and I have my cd950 to tweet! I have a pc which i'm going to turn into a media centre soon playin lossless files but time is always the limiting factor ! I would be glad of some pointers, comments! And can someone tell me what colour to paint my speakers???
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Glad you enjoy the DIY side of things...
Originally Posted by jcgrant
