Time for another surprise

[mcandmar]

Thanks for the explanation.  My first thought was that you are a sucker for punishment with all those PCB's to trouble shoot

One thing i am not keen on is shield drain wires for the input wiring crossing the output cap leads, i can see people accidentally shorting those out.

 

[netosullivc]

Hi some sweet parts it the kit - good stuff. I'm interested to know why the seemingly fancy hv reg cap Cc?  Low value would short hf noise but wouldnt any old cap do?
Second cap -the radial cap 100uF - why the choice and what exactly is a radial cap?
Thanks

 

[Paul Birkeland]

Hi some sweet parts it the kit - good stuff. I'm interested to know why the seemingly fancy hv reg cap Cc?  Low value would short hf noise but wouldnt any old cap do?

This does indeed short HF noise to ground, which improves the stability of the TL431 regulator.  That film and foil (fancy!) capacitor does a nice job of handling HF noise.

Second cap -the radial cap 100uF - why the choice and what exactly is a radial cap?

I've seen a lot of our Crack customers struggle with how to fit a pair of 100uF coupling caps inside the Crack, so I took great pains with the Crackatwoa to ensure that there were two vast regions on the chassis in which one could install a large variety of 100uF capacitors.  To really be helpful in achieving that goal, we added anchors to the chassis that are bolted to the plate so that the weight of those large film caps can be supported by the chassis plate instead of terminal strips. 

The 100uF radial (radial has the leads poking the same ends) capacitors are intended to have dimensions that are somewhat similar to a film capacitor, so that swapping caps is quite easy.

 

[Doc B]

Axial is a cap with a wire poking out of each end (the axes of the cylinder). Radial is like most of our lytic caps, with the wires both at one end of the cylinder so they can be bent (radially) to an attaching point.

 

[lextek]

So I own and love my Crack w/Speedball.  I think it is amazing with Sennheiser HD600s.  What would I notice moving to the Crack -A -Two-A?  Also adding the HD800s to the collection.

 

[Doc B]

Sorry Bob, I just found this. The Cracka2a has a blacker background and a sense of better frequency extension than Crack. I think it is a significant upgrade in terms of resolution. We did an interesting listening session Friday. We had Mainline and a Cracka2a, and a pair of stock HD800s and my Anax modded HD800s. While the Mainline sounded better on my modded 800s and that would be my choice for critical listening, we tended to prefer the Cracka2a when listening with the stock 800s. It didn't have quite the resolution of Mainline, but its more mid and lower mid-centric sound worked well with the brighter stock 800s for casual listening.

 

[NightFlight]

Surely someone will find a film cap that won't fit, but we left tons of space!

Duelund.