English Crack

ccoolliinn

New member
My first home build of any hifi after years of interest. The build was very straight forward and great fun. I started with the case which i kept simple with just a clean up and rounding of the edges and ten coats of clear varnish. I tried to make the wiring as neat as possible routing some wires to give a more pleasing look. The base plate was going to be painted but liked the brushed look when the kit arrived so left well alone.
The Crack has now been running for a while and with my Beyerdynamic T90 headphones comparing it with my Bayerdynamic A20 amp and are very pleased with the results. The next job is the Speed ball but i going to enjoy the Crack as it is for a while first.  Front end was Arcam CD37 and Chord Anthem II cable.                                                                     
 

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Then Bottlehead included some nicer RCA jacks while still keeping the price low. Enjoy your listening. The Crack is something special...
 
Nice work.

Can't wait for mine to arrive. I haven't soldered for some 25 years - looking forward to it.

When will we get a UK power cord option?
 
That's a great looking build!

The Euro power cord kit is an interesting idea, I'll have to float that one by the chief.

Cracks do now come with nicer jacks, free of charge.
 
That really is a nice neat job and good dressing of the wiring.
I'm a bit of a stickler for good cable dressing and taking time to do a build , so well done.
 
As a first upgrade i decided to replace the output caps before fitting the speedball.

Some rerouting of wires was required to keep a neat look. :-\

Only had a chance to run one cd through it so far but there is improvement.  :)
 

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The Crack is now finished with Speedball added. This has been a very enjoyable build and i am very pleased with the final results. What a great product you have here, a match for any £1000 ready made amp. I wish i could build one of the other amps but my speakers would not like tubes (PMC Twenty 23) >:(
 

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How did you drill a hole through the crack without damaging the components? Also, the cap holders, am I correct in assuming that the metal post doesnt come into contact with the chassis?
 
Haha. Nice. Well then another question. What drill/drill bit did you use? I want to make the hole for the headphone jack bigger because i want to add a neutrik jack instead. But I'm not sure on how to go about it.
 
kekoukela said:
Haha. Nice. Well then another question. What drill/drill bit did you use? I want to make the hole for the headphone jack bigger because i want to add a neutrik jack instead. But I'm not sure on how to go about it.




The screws for the posts were 4 mm thread so I used a 5 mm bit, sorry I don't know the imperial size.
 
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