I haven't had a pure tube amplifier since an old Dynaco Stereo 70 I attempted to resuscitate nearly 30 years ago. The craving to delve once again into tube audio, along with my current interest in headphone listening, led me to stumble upon Bottlehead's exciting little Crack kit. I haven't done anything particularly special with this build; it's pretty much straight out of the box. The only variations from the kit parts are the Neutrik jack (originally purchased for my Quickie, I felt the polished nut looked better on the Crack) and an "on-off" labelled power switch which replaced the classier stock part I regrettably broke while attempting to install. My thanks to everyone who posted their experience with hammered finish paint as the grey Rustoleum finish turned out quite nicely after being baked at 170 degrees for one hour. A simple Valspar satin black finish on the end bell provides a respectable, if not perfect, look to the transformer. Other than that, it was straight by the directions at the end of which I was blessed with perfect meter readings and a nicely working amplifier. After almost 100 hours of use I'm looking forward to what difference the Speeball upgrade will make.
The Crack is the amplifier of choice while exploring my budding interest in high resolution audio downloads. it's being fed from Audirvana running on my MacBook Pro via a late model HRT Music Streamer II cabled with Audioquest Jade interconnects. None of my other amps has done justice to the AKG K501s like the little Crack. It's provided a richness of sound which nicely expands on the AKG's strengths of soundstage and midrange performance.
My thanks to everyone at Bottlehead for this lovely little kit and the happiness it's bringing. I'm now envisioning a Crack priced tape head pre-amp kit and instructions for a tape head output mod for a RT-707.
The base shown is currently unfinished as I'm considering polishing my woodworking skills with matching bases for the Crack and Quickie.
The Crack is the amplifier of choice while exploring my budding interest in high resolution audio downloads. it's being fed from Audirvana running on my MacBook Pro via a late model HRT Music Streamer II cabled with Audioquest Jade interconnects. None of my other amps has done justice to the AKG K501s like the little Crack. It's provided a richness of sound which nicely expands on the AKG's strengths of soundstage and midrange performance.
My thanks to everyone at Bottlehead for this lovely little kit and the happiness it's bringing. I'm now envisioning a Crack priced tape head pre-amp kit and instructions for a tape head output mod for a RT-707.
The base shown is currently unfinished as I'm considering polishing my woodworking skills with matching bases for the Crack and Quickie.
