Any DIYer s out there ?

Sean, where is John Risches site? I am getting ready to move and want to get some ideas for sound absorption to tweak the new room.

An Audiogon member and best friend Jcbtubes built my pre-amp from scratch and does incredible mods on tube amps and pre-amps. He is an EE who should quit his job and go into the audio business. All tube gear that I own has his magic touch. His modified Cary 805s make the original amps sound vailed and tired. His homemade pre-amp has gone up against the finest out there and bettered each one. If I have a problem with my gear or am looking for improvments in my system I call the man. Every audiophile should have a Jcbtubes.

I've built amps designed by Nelson pass. Very simple circuits and requires very few parts. Sounds pretty good too!

Sean: I am in a weak kind of way. My current interest is retro-fitting male IEC plugs to my HTS2000 power conditioners and as of today (due to an informative email from another member) also upgrading the power outlets in the unit (the ones that I use anyway) as well. I have no idea which wires go where, so will use a $6 outlet tester from RS to find out the proper hookup by trial and error. As noted in another thread, I had an inexpensive but well endowed (with upturned spikes for each shelf) bolt together equipment rack mig welded into a one piece unit by my auto mechanic. He did not charge me for the work and this project was just to save $300 or so on a one piece rack. I would prefer (for the time being anyway) to hire out the work on these projects (like the Monster conditioners right now), but do not know of anyone local that does this type of work for a reasonable hourly rate (I mean that this is pretty basic stuff not worth $65/hour in my way of thinking). A friend of mine brought over a pair of the DIY micro wire IC's (in copper) to try out on my system and I will give the silver version of this IC a shot after I clear out some of the other household projects that I still need to complete (new herb garden, relocating the Hi-fi system and installing ceiling fans in the bedrooms for starters). DIY bass traps are something else that I would like to try (now that my system has some bass:-) and I am looking into it.

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.