I got the DIY bug after soldering up a pair of Homegrown IC's without blowing up the equipment or burning down the house. Recently, in talking to Rodger Modjeski about tubes for my RM-10 amp, we got on the subject of passive pre-amps. He opined that very few active pre's have low enough noise to suit him and has used passive with cd for years. The result was that he sold me a kind of NOS Noble volume pot originally used in the ARC SP-6, some wires and RCA's and a recipe for assembling it all. I wired it up to a cheap Radio Shack metal box and wow! Big improvement in sound over the SFL-1 I was using and I built it. Well, I drilled the holes and soldered it. Wish you all could have been here when I plugged everything in and it worked. Postmasters are on the way and soon, I too will be able to say I cut into a speaker cable. I'm also about halfway through "There Are No Electrons" by Kenn Amdahl and when I can figure out how to get the green guys to the party through tubes, I'll design an amplifier myself.
Any DIYer s out there ?
I know from reading some of the posts that there are other "DIYer's" out there. For those that don't know what "DIY" means, it is an acronym for "Do It Yourself". I'm particularly interested in knowing what you folks have built or modified. You can go into as much or little detail as you like. Since i started the thread, i'll do the first post.
I started off by trying several different "homebrew" speaker cables. From there, i went into building interconnects and then power cords. Somewhere along the way, things got more serious and i began to tear into existing designs and "make them better". I've modified a couple dozen sets of speakers, built and desiged speakers from scratch, modified amps and am even building one from "accumulated parts". I've also built sound absorption panels and bass traps courtesy of Jon Risch's website.
I've continued doing this as i find great pleasure in knowing that i helped contribute to the enjoyment of both my system and several others in a "special" way other than just by assembling the various components. It also keeps me out of trouble and minimizes cash outlay for "manufactured" goodies. After all, what one can buy for $1 can be made for $0.25 to $0.60 and be done MUCH better.
Anybody else like doing this kind of stuff ? Don't be shy or modest. Tinkerer's are welcome and PLEASE, go in to detail about your favorite "projects". Sean
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I started off by trying several different "homebrew" speaker cables. From there, i went into building interconnects and then power cords. Somewhere along the way, things got more serious and i began to tear into existing designs and "make them better". I've modified a couple dozen sets of speakers, built and desiged speakers from scratch, modified amps and am even building one from "accumulated parts". I've also built sound absorption panels and bass traps courtesy of Jon Risch's website.
I've continued doing this as i find great pleasure in knowing that i helped contribute to the enjoyment of both my system and several others in a "special" way other than just by assembling the various components. It also keeps me out of trouble and minimizes cash outlay for "manufactured" goodies. After all, what one can buy for $1 can be made for $0.25 to $0.60 and be done MUCH better.
Anybody else like doing this kind of stuff ? Don't be shy or modest. Tinkerer's are welcome and PLEASE, go in to detail about your favorite "projects". Sean
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