Tuesday, December 28, 2010

_all black with white socks.

the holidays were nice to me, black wardrobe and white footwear filled my hamper and i feel loved. 

Now the bad news.  My socks are grey,  My house is dirty,  I am happy.


A milling attachment for my lathe 

rather than bragging about my new hack milling attachment i'd like to talk about the grey socks.

I am a slob,  I cannot cleanup. It must be genetic, my place is a mess.


grey socks are not pure they stand out from the rest if you accept them as fact it is a mess.

The hell with Dr. Seuss and politically correct. My place is a mess that I cannot correct.



who am i trying to impress

The blacksmith I have yet to meet from my past.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Silver and Gold.

My favorite UPS man left me my X-mas present a few days early in the form of a large box filled with gold.

Add a few pounds of silver and you end up with something special.


Without a size reference it is hard to tell exactly what you are looking at but let me just say that is a very large 80% nickel 5K output transformer that will do around 3W full range!

For reference, most people consider moving one size up from the autoformer size is a big 80% core.  Well these babies are 6 sizes up and sounding wonderful with a 2A3 playing Elvis's Christmas.


Happy Holidays to all!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

CG+CV=?

a new contest!

Two years ago I spent a lost evening in NYC with new friends and one old one.

We danced again

 We tried to purchase bridges.

We saw liberty

We went fast

We danced

He sat with his invisible friend

the reason for the celebration.


Enough of the history. Rumor has it that CV  has a boy on the way to carry on his legacy and the boy deserves a proper name fitting of his heritage.

The surname of the yet to be born entity will be "vryonides" pronounced "vree-oh-ni-dees"

I'll start out with  Bryan Edward Vryonides or Be for short.

dave

Saturday, December 11, 2010

T Model Ford at the Hi Tone....

Sadly, this ninety-year-old outlasted us... by 2 am, we were starting to lose focus... he was still pickin' and smilin'...



everyone really should own the Fat Possum documentary "You See Me Laughing"... but here is a clip of part of the T Model portion....

Peace,
Me

Friday, December 10, 2010

Turntable Lamp...

My new room has too many doors - a curse for a listening room - so my gear has to go right *there*... and there only... One of the problems is that there is no light in that corner. I am not a fan of throwing on a couple hundred watts when in the middle of a late night listening session. It just ruins the mood. So what to do?


Ahhh.... a nice, twenty watt bulb.....

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

British Engineering.


For some time I have been looking at the above crossover for a Tannoy gold wondering about why they made some of the choices they did.  The end result is that the inductors are held in place on the phenolic board by packing tape.





Now compare that to a recent showing of a Klangfilm remake that was played at the most recent ETF.  While still in a naked form, The picture below shows the more rigid approach taken by some of my friends. 


Notice the use of standoffs and mounting hardware.  I did notice a bottle of wine in the picture and since they were in France, that is a perfectly acceptable excuse.  What bothers me is they were in Northern France only a short ferry ride across the English Channel from Great Britain and obviously the creators fell under the influence of the Brits when they finally completed their work.


Yes... the above pic shows the same amp with nickel output transformers  held down with strapping tape and attached with of all things clip leads.


OK,  Obviously I joke because I am jealous.  I have wanted to attend the ETF since year one when the crazy Viking started it.  I always say next year but rumor has it after the third year in France it is moving to Germany and hopefully this post will force the Germans to kidnap me and make me attend the horrible event and make me drink all of that horrible beer.

As a last note, thanks to the many people who put pictures up of the event so I could steal them without proper credit.  One came from Holgers site and the packing tape one was found at http://www.tubesoundelectronics.de/etf2010_1.htm

wired


This is a before picture of 44 pounds of flat magnet wire



  The end result of a days work is 4 empty spools
and a few feet of extra wire....


and the contents of 2 - 25 pound flat rate boxes 
on their way to Memphis.





Saturday, December 4, 2010

and the winner is...


tre' drop me a note with what you want to do with them.

dave

Friday, December 3, 2010

from the archives: My Old Azuras...

.
This rig is probably one of my second or third revisions from when I was working out of Lisa's grandparents' house. It is a long story, but basically I was taking care of the house and it became Experience Music over the course of a few years. I was spoiled then. I had three nice listening rooms there, and another here at the house.


I am pretty sure this was from winter 2003-2004, just after VSAC. It was one of those systems that was not perfect, but did a lot of things very, very well....

Peace,
Me

Monday, November 29, 2010

steampunk


this seems like a simple point A to point B.


literal steam punk

draw your own conclusions but I have to say that the guy deserves to be a member of the family.

Western Electric 13c


This beauty popped up on eBay. Sold for a little over US$3k.


The WE13 was new to me. It appears quite similar to the 7A, but scaled up for public address by swapping in 205's over the 216's to get some power.


Check out the construction. I like it! Dave can you make my iron look like this sweet silver and black... and all caps should be engraved, right?


and then the literature.... This baby driving some horns to a huge crowd. Who says you need a Crown amp for PA?





(Joe, I hope to get to listen to it in Korea.)

Friday, November 26, 2010

What's wrong with this picture?


On one of my Asheville trips I went to the Radio Museum at their local technical college. What met me in the first case had me crying with laughter. Thousands of students walk past this case every day. It is in the main lobby announcing the museum upstairs. I am sure not a single student has ever noticed what is wrong with this display. In fact, it probably indicates just how much of a geek I am that I found it so amusing... are you that much of a geek as well?







In fact, every single tube in the display was incorrect. The highlight for me was the "battery" Eimac. Although it is an absolutely beautiful early specimen with the open plate connection, the six amp filament draw would eat even a giant lead acid cell extremely quickly. Below are two of the same shots with what should be in them.





so just beware when that eBay auction that is tempting you says, "museum quality"...

Peace,
Me

p,s.- That VT-2 is the driver that I am using in the final 304tl build. Yummy tennis balls... :^)

Black Freeday

Since everyone else is cutting prices today and content has been slow, I'll offer up another pair of the small 49% nickel PS chokes for free.

Same basic rules as the last ones.  A one line reply with your unique name or moniker gets you entered and random.org will determine the winner ina couple of days.

Along with the 30-50-80 ohm possibilities I also have the curves for a 10 ohm and 1.3 ohm version.  The 1.3 ohm is intended for filament isolation. (final L of a LCLCL filter) These are not the only possibilities and i'll work with the winner to get them exactly what they want with this given core size.

L=hy  I=ma

L=mhy I=Amps

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Day Jobs and Birthday Month.

First of all Happy Birthday Month to Lisa!  I know we have been somewhat lame but things have been hectic for both of us.  I actually had the day job get me busy and while playing around I came up with this video to test out an idea for the end of a TV commercial.


In the audio world, I have most of the mundane stuff shipped that I am behind on and should be able to get back to the cool stuff like big 80% nickel outputs and Rev. II of the FC103 in the very near future.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Scheming Kittens.

 Sure they look innocent and cuddly

Not a care in the world

Beware when they scheme to escape

They sense you watching

And you must face their wrath

These are some pics that came along with the usual "gear" pics from a friend at RMAF.  There seems to be a common thread between many audio folk and animals and I hope these pics at least bring a smile to someone.  In the even you ever need to hunt down and capture one of these beasts,  drop me a note since my 6 year old has become quite proficient in caging feral animals.




More RIAA Nickel....

.
yummy! yummy! Nickel gives me butterflies in my tummy!

Phono is tough. I can't sugar coat it. Easily more parts than a big amplifier. Add to that the requirement of absolutely dead silent, and it is work. But it is work with rewards - butterflies when things all finally come together....


I also often get the question of why my phono is so expensive... and why it weighs so much... Above is a picture of my signal chassis from one side. Below is a picture from the rear. The signal chassis has fifteen pieces of hand wound nickel inductors alone.. nearly all of which are custom for this project. The power supply has another dozen or so chokes and transformers as well... and then there are the film in oil capacitors... and the potted teflons... That is how I end up over 150 pounds for phono. It just happens. Blame Dave. Kick him in the shins if you want. Tell him it is from me. My back will thank you.



[Some rough snapshots of new Kahn Phono are up at Experience Music]

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Sometimes you get lucky!

Silver Silver Silver!   Yes it seems every other day another person is asking me about silver windings and I say the same thing to everyone.  It is really easy to get but insanely expensive so write me the blank check and I'll get it done. 


I was doing up a batch of autoformers for the Bent remote units and figured it was time to dig into my meager stash of silver wire and do up a pair that I can circulate among a few of the OEM's who have been asking for silver.


The red enamel is the copper wire I typically use and the pair wound with the gold enameled wire is essentially my remaining stash of silver wire.  I was actually really scared to use it since even though I did all of the calculations I feared the dreaded out of wire with 30 turns to go.  As the pictures above prove, I didn't run out of wire and now I'd like to show you what remains of my current silver stash.


I guess that means I can offer up some nice $10K silver interconnects :-)

dave

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