Mainline Magic

JamieMcC

New member
Cheers Bottlehead, you guys really have cooked up a superb amp with the Mainline.

I finished up my build earlier today and the Mainline is a absolute triumph suffice to say I am over the moon and have been glued to it for most of the evening and envisage it being a late night.

Much to my surprise all the resistance checks and voltage checks where bang on the money and the only thing that required a little rework during the build was I had to re-orientate one of the Neutrik head outs which I put it with the locking release button facing forward and only noticed when it came to hooking up as the orientation did not match with the instructions it only took a couple of minutes to re position and other than that little hiccup the build has been very enjoyable and has gone like a dream with absolutely no other problems what so ever.

Build time for hooking up ran around 16-18 hours in total in several sessions over three days. I am a bit dyslexic and I must have re-read each step at least four times or more and ohm'd out every resistor, my illuminated magnifying glass also had a good work out.

There was a little bit of head scratching at the end as I had two 100K  2W resistors and one 1μF 50V capacitor left in the parts box. but after a bit of searching through the manual and comparing with the parts list they turned out to be surplus phew!

Some build pics  :)

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Cheers, I didn't manage to capture it in the pics but there is just a pinch of deep blue metal flake added to the first passes of clear coat its not noticeable at first glance which is what I  was hoping for but as the angle of view changes the flake catches the eye as it sparkles in the light. Considering it was the first time I had used the flake product it has worked really well I also made a matching headphone stand to suit my new HD800's with a bit of flake added as well. The stand came out really well and has inspired me to make a few more to try out with some different hot rod style paint finishes. 

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Very nice, HD 800 sens that's one set of cans I would swap my Bayer dynamic  T90 for  ;)

I do like the carbon look, it looks very cool without being over the top.
 
Well in the end resistance was futile and I have succumbed to temptation and installed the RTI Teflon output capacitors which were originally purchased well over a year ago and have been saving. Its extremely satisfying to eventually find them such a worthy home (thanks for the heads up Skeptic).

;D

For anyone interested I posted some initial impressions on the stock Mainline over on headfi

https://www.head-fi.org/products/bottlehead-mainline/reviews/13080

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I really enjoyed Your review, Jamie.
I am also hard pressed to find find faults with the Hd800/ Mainline combo.
It really is killer.
 
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