First the challenge and fun of building has been a truly invigorating experience. The crackatwoa is an upgraded model of bottleheads popular diy crack otl headphone amplifier with a larger power transformer, shuntregulated power supply, multiple inputs, and optional addition of a bottleheads twoquiet stepped attenuator. For camera buffs, i used chdk with an intervalometer script on an canon sx30 to take the photos. The two stage zero feedback rc coupled circuit uses parallel feed a. I know bill b has got the harmonia 300b based tube buffer that really looks amazing. I used beyer t1s, t90s, dt50, at msr7s grado 325is, focal clear, akg 7xx, hd 600s anandas and many more stepped attenutator, 2 rca inputs switchable, makes.
A forum for discussion of the crack otl headphone amp kit. Bottlehead crack, electronics by ramicio on wednesday, august 22, 2012, at 12. I have the bottlehead crack otl headphone amp, its amazing, i also have the speedball upgrade, by far the best headphone amp ive heard. A 12au7 input tube serving as a voltage amplifier, directly coupled to a 6080 power tube as a. A forum for discussing kit assembly by bottleheads factory authorized technician, paul birkeland.
Bottlehead insists whatever upgrade one makes on the crack psu the crackatwoa has a better one. Docs just announced a new otl headphone kit called crack. I stumbled onto a build log of an bottlehead otl crack headphone amplifier. The eros 2 schematic shows the output caps to be 1.
The kit for discussion today is a single ended triode parafeed transformer output monoblock amp called the paraglow, by electronic tonalities of poulsboro, washington. Built around a burrbrown 22 opamp, it has handmatched. The marvelously addictive bottlehead crack innerfidelity. Bottlehead crack otl tube headphone amp with speedball and upgrades location. Bottlehead chassis, wood bases and speaker cabinets, transformers, pc boards and even that nifty little bottlehead badge are all made to order in the usa. Bottlehead quicksand battery powered amplifier kit a great starter amp kit with plenty of room to build upon. Like crack this amp is intended to be used with high impedance headphones 200 ohms or higher like sennheiser hd600650800, beyerdynamic 250 and 600 ohms headphones, etc.
Bottlehead stereomour kit thinking about building a 2a3. Foreplay, rebuilt by quest tube preamp, many upgrades. One of these days ill get around to polishing and posting the schematic for the menacetc. Crack is an output transformerless amp designed specifically for running higher. What yields an even more intense experience than crack. It typically takes four weeks to get the parts made for your kit. I used excellent parts again and this amp does things that no other amp has in my system.
The chassis is twice as big as the crack chassis and along with fitting in the extra inputs, shunt regs and attenuator components there is plenty of space for those. Resources bottlehead web site and crack product page. This is a quick build log of bottlehead crack otl tube amplifier with some pictures and little. Along with the quickie, i also built the bottlehead quicksand amplifier. Bottlehead quicksand battery powered amplifier kit a great. For those of you wondering about the new crack amplifier, this is also very sweet and enticing set up. The bottlehead crack kit the amp runs on a single 9 pin 12au7 and an 8 pin 6080 6as7. Depending on your patience, you may want to wait until the next big sale.
It uses a 12au7a as its input stage, and a 6080 in a cathode follower configuration as its output stage. A forum for discussing the bottlehead kaiju stereomono 300b power amplifier kit. Crack output transformerless tube headphone amplifier kit. But here i present a little desktop system that i put together to check out a neighbors bottlehead crack headphone amp and he also let me. There are various modifications possible, most involving either different extra capacitors or different volume pots and attenuators, but the sage advice offered by. The pc board for the loads on the 6080 tube has very. Bottlehead crack headphone amp desktop setup youtube.
Low impedance headphones the vast majority of consumer headphones will not work well with this amplifier. Other diy kits in the bottlehead stable include the singleended experimenters headphone and speaker amp, the s. A bottlehead forum threads on suitable tubes for rolling and output cap upgrades. Upgrading to film caps does improve the sound yet none of totl amps ive owned had film as reservoir caps. Other than the kits, he also puts out a magazine called valve, and runs a forum on tubes at the. Tube headphone amplifier schematic my diy 6as7 otl tube headphone amp. Bottlehead crack wspeedball 4 tubes amplifier tube. I agree, theres only so much you can do in a simple power supply as in the crack. If youve ever been interested in developing some soldering skills and learn about whats going on inside of a tube amp, bottlehead kits are a great place to start. The bottlehead could capture the ethereal gossamer touch of jeanefflam bavouzets piano on debussys reverie but also his highoctane rendition of the suite bergamesque. The company was created by the president for life dan doc b schmalle in the mid1990s, and primarily offers diy tube audio kits for both headphones and home stereos. It could cover in a warm bath the weird tones and rich colours of bill frisells version of shenandoah on the cd eastwest.
This amp has been stained beautifully and looks much better than stock. Ive also built the decware se84diy and zsp1, as kits go the bottlehead kits are not overly expensive, they are complete, well designed and come with exceptional directions. Bottlehead stereomour set amp w impedance switch kit price. I love the way it looks as much as the way it sounds. Speedball is our camille cascode constant current source upgrade for the crack headphone amplifier. Im not much of a believer in cap upgrades, but i must admire the go big or go home attitude. I have left a forum post about my problems which is what they ask you to do and are waiting a response. This is a cmoydesign headphone amp, encased in a solid butcher block of red oak, which i built in 2003. The crack probably looks a lot like it and coupling the output really helps when driving. The bottlehead crack is a superb introduction into the world of diy audio. I was just looking around and i stumbled upon the bottlehead beepre 300b preamp.
The company says you get 100 to 200 hours of life from the quickies four 9volt batteries and two dcells, which by my calculations gives a worstcase operating cost of about cents an hour. Bottlehead crackatwoa otl tube headphone amplifier build. I think i heard the version with the extra addon circuit. Links and discussion relating to valve magazine, from whence bottlehead corp. Bottlehead foreplay preamp diy amplifier, audiophile.
Recheck your wiring from the pc boards to the amp circuit. Here you will find vacuum tube based amplifier, preamplifier and headphone amplifier kits, speaker kits, finished high end tube audio products, reel to reel tape machine upgrades, parts, and one of the finest support communities on the web. Bottlehead crack headphone amp build and modification hifi. Nonotl design, will drive lo and hi impdance headphones. It can also be due to two separate pads being bridged with solder by accident. Im going though phases of getting different types of tube amp pp, set, hybrid, otl and comparing them to one anoher. For those of you too young to remember the heyday of mainframe computers, ibm dominated the market with products that were universally acknowledged to be inferior to their competitors. The amp assembly is compete but there are two leds which dont light. Ive now built a crack headphone amp with speedball upgrade and an eros phonopre. X with extended foreplay, the stereomour 2a345 stereo amp, the paramount 300b2a3 monoblocs, the quickie batterypowered preamp and the eros and seduction phono preamp kits.
With nowhere boy, a new john lennon biopic, the bottlehead crack amplifier and my old sennheiser hd580 headphones kept me totally absorbed in the film. I bought the crack and its speedball upgrade after i got my hands on a pair of massdrop x sennheiser hd 6xx headphones. Upgrading the bottlehead crack headphone amplifier. We ordered a couple of cracks right before the price increase was announced more on that later so that probably. A simple circuit also means a low parts count, which keeps the price low, too. Originally announced in 2010, the crack is an affordable tubebased headphone amplifier kit offered by the bottlehead corporation located in poulsbo, washington state, usa. After thoroughly enjoying the crack for over a year, i decided it was time to enjoy the next step up in the bottlehead range for both a challenge and a new step towards audio nirvana. Bottlehead crackatwoa headphone amp build portable audio.
Post your situation with your voltage readings in this forum and we will help you to sort it. Bottlehead crack headphone amp build and modification. Bottlehead crack headphone amplifier tube mazetube maze. Comparison request ive always read that the bottlehead crack is the best amp for the hd6xx series, but i dont really want to spend almost twice as much on the amp as i did on the actual headphones. Completely purchased diy and builtpainted on my own. A 12au7 input tube serving as a voltage amplifier, directly coupled to a 6080 power tube as a cathode follower output. Bottlehead considers the crack a simple circuit skill level 1 kit. Bottlehead forums are a spectacular resource, go to the crack subforum for questions and assistance building this amp. The parts quality is very good, the documentation is truly excellent, the bottlehead forums provide fantastic peertopeer assistance, and construction is very easy. The output is capacitively coupled the only cap in the audio path, and has an output impedance of about 120 ohms making it an amp suited mainly for higher impedance headphones.
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