Walnut Crack

[mSummers]

I finally finished my Crack build and upgrades.  The final piece of the puzzle was building a base out of walnut to dress the amp up for use at my office.  Here's a couple photos of the final product:







Technical Details:
The initial build was mostly stock.  Since I had a new top plate cut from mirror finish stainless steel, I went ahead and installed Tefflon Sockets with PC Boards and a TDK Volume Pot in the initial build.  The second upgrade was to install the Speedball.  Third upgrade was to replace the final cap in the power supply with a film cap and replace the final resistor with a Triad C-7X choke.  Fourth upgrade was to replace the output caps with Mundorf film caps and the fifth and final upgrade was to bypass the Mundorf's with Jantzen Z-Superior film caps. 

The headphones in the last photo above started as stock Beyerdynamic 250ohm DT-770's.  When I re-cabled the headphones, I contacted Beyer and ordered replacement 600ohm drivers for them.

Unfortunately I didn't take photos of each of the intermediate upgrade stages, but here are the couple I did get from start to finish:









I had a lot of fun building the kit and really love good music sounds on it.  My coworkers were skeptical that anything could sound better than their standard headphones running directly from their computers and all of them that have tried it so far were blown away.  Thanks to everyone at Bottlehead for designing such an awesome kit and a special thanks to PB for his assistance with troubleshooting during the build.

 

[johnsonad]

Beautiful!

 

[JamieMcC]

Nice job the Walnut looks super. Did Front Panel Express do the top plate?

 

[Grainger49]

That is absolutely STUNNING !  I particularly like the relief around the top plate. 

What finish did you apply to the wood?

I'm a mechanical klutz so I don't try anything like the top plate or base.  I will go with your initial build was stock.  You didn't change the circuit and adding the tube sockets would have been really awkward after the initial build.

Those are sharp pictures.  It looks like you have professional lighting in the first one when I enlarged it.  Awesome !

Co-workers can be lacking in knowledge, ignorant.  I think you have educated a few.  I have fun telling folks that my system is 3.5WPC after they have listened for a while. 

BTW, that soldering station is the modern version of my soldering station, a W-TCP from about 1974.

 

[denti alligator]

Where did you get the top plate done?

 

[Mosez]

That's a spectacular looking built. I'm intrigued by the capacitor standoffs/brackets. Where those custom made? 3D printed perhaps?

 

[Strikkflypilot]

Fantastic! Looks very professional and clean.

 

[mSummers]

Thanks everyone!

Jamie and Sam,  I had the plate cut by a local shop, Smucker Laser Cutting  http://www.smuckerlaser.com/index.html  I would have

Grainger,  The finish is 8 coats of Minwax satin polyurethane.  I wiped each of the coats on with a cotton rag and sanded with 800 grit paper between coats.

Dean,  The capacitor brackets are 3-D printed.  To make sure everything would fit, I modeled the amp parts in a 3-D program and then created models of the brackets.

 

[Karl5150]

A very artistic rendition.
As you and Grainger pointed out, many people don't know how beautifully misic can be reproduced; and some will still be satisfied with compressed files, played through a device's D/A converter, listening to marginal speakers or headphones. Their loss. 

 

[Adamaley]

Beautiful. How much was the laser cutting? I suspect it must have been pretty expensive to simply set up for one piece, or do you have kind of relationship with the shop? All the same, it is stunning -  great attention to detail.