Since we've talked a bit about home stereo stuff lately.....

[z31maniac]

What about amp kits? Is there anything out there like Parts-express.com speaker kits?

Just the thought of glowing tubes reproducing my hi-fi stereo sound seems cool. Or solid state would be cool as well.

[Jean]

Yes. A good kit to start with would be a "chip amp", based on the LM3886. This little chip is used in some high end and pretty expensive amps as well, this isn't some shitty radio shack 10 watt kit either. All the information about it and if the boards are still available you can order it here http://www.chipamp.com/lm3886.shtml

One channel with it's power supply circuit looks like this:



my 6 channel version from years ago



Another quality and well known kit, but with higher component count is AKSA from Hugh Dean in Australia. http://www.aksaonline.com/ , regarded for good support and high sound quality. This will require a bigger power supply/heatsinks vs. the chip amp above. This kit is sold as a "kit", you can't order just the boards and "a la carte" your components.

Another good quality amplifier you can build is called P3A. http://sound.westhost.com/project3a.htm you can order the boards and they aren't expensive. I've build two of these over the years, still use one pair with my mains.

I build it as a dual mono, each amplifier channel has it's own dedicated power supply. Heatsinks are from Conrad in australia.


Older "test" version of it, sourced heatsinks at bargain price from a local electronics store. Not a dual mono.


If you want even more power, Leach amp is a good one to build as well. I am not sure if the boards are still available. But it has huge following and lots of reviews and info online.
A little high on the component count: one channel per board.



Then if you get bored with chip or class a/b amps, you can venture into building any number of Class A clones by Nelson Pass of Pass Labs http://www.passlabs.com/index.html . He supports DIY, and his old amplifier design circuits are in public domain, so it's all 100% legal if not done for profit.

To get started in the world of Class A, Mini Aleph is one of the simpler / quality amps you can find / build.
Not a huge component count, main boards with power supply filter boards



I haven't finished my pair of Aleph 2's yet, they are 100watt monoblocks, and since they are class A they produce a lot of heat and I couldn't source heatsinks big enough for them (missed a group buy). I decided to go with the highest components for this I could afford, dale resistors, matched output pairs, non inductive low impedence resistors, high quality high temp capacitors. You can spend still even more, but I tried to stay on the sane side lol



To get an idea on the size of heatsinks / power supply you'll need for this.

http://www.passdiy.com/gallery/html/a2-p1.htm

http://www.passdiy.com/gallery/html/a2-p3.htm

Browse / spend some time on here http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/ and http://sound.westhost.com/ to get some ideas and just for good reading :)
Rod has many good kits / projects you can start with http://sound.westhost.com/projects.htm

I recently added one of his pre-amps, just need to find the time to make a chassis for it. you can select from a number of different op-amps for your budget.



There are also some very good phono stages (pearl) if you need to build one of those for your turntable, solid state or tube. Some very good tube amps too (any number of Zen amps), but obviously these favor efficient spakers and aren't high power. Lots of tube stuff here http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/ and pre amp stuff here http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/analog-line-level/

I would start with solid state stuff since you are just starting out.

Or, and a source for chassis if you don't feel like building one yourself - http://www.thlaudio.com/casebpwrE.htm
Quality heatsinks of various sizes you can get from Conrad - http://www.conradheatsinks.com/welcome.htm

[z31maniac]

Excellent post as usual Jean, I think I'll pick up the LM3886 kit here in a few weeks once I've done a bit more research on transformers/volume control.

[Jean]

Common toroid transformers to use are http://www.avellindberg.com/transformers/y23_range.htm and http://www.plitron.com/ if you want to pay a little more.

Also check http://www.apexjr.com/ sometimes he gets some good used stuff that you can use for cheap!

I think partsexpress.com now carries avel torroids...

For volume (and bass/trebble controls) $5-10 pots Alps are good for the money ...if you want to spend more on fancy ones you can go with fancy stepped attenuators...basically think of it as a multi switch, you wire in bunch of resistors to make whatever value pot you need. These are usually used in very high end pre-amps.

example - http://store.triodestore.com/4pol24posals.html

Also check out http://www.audioasylum.com/index.htm http://www.partsconnexion.com/ http://angela.com/ http://www.percyaudio.com/

[jquirit]

Oh man... this is a dark path. For once you start down this, there will be much misery and suffering. Mostly from your pocketbook. But, down this path is so much fun (if you're a tinkerer).

I went down this path for headphone amplifiers. Was one of my big kicks when I had a really well paying job and low expenses. Building amplifiers that were powerful enough to drive bookshelf speakers and using them for headphones. Probably the most fun amp I've built were the Gilmore Dynalo. I miss that amp. I still have parts and PCBs for a Dynahi that I planned on building but never did get that done. Life stuff came up and that all went into the backburner.

This is someone else's Dynahi, but this is what I wanted to build:

http://www.ibiblio.org/tkan/audio/dynahi.html

Overkill, but from what I head, it's GLORIOUS overkill. :D

[browntown]

start with the sex amp and work your way up

http://www.bottlehead.com/et/adobespc/S.E.X./SEX.htm

once you get going with tubes, ribbon and horn speakers will become all you care about. A high definition speaker should be able to run on 2 clean, warm, wonderful watts.

Open your wallet.

If you like solid state, take it from a guy that once owned krell and mcintosh components == you'll start spending 500$ a meter on interconnects because your pissed that the power company is feeding you dirty electricity. You know you've really fallen off the deep end when you start buying cd transports on marble balancing cones, and use outboard DAC's with gold/silver solder.

Life is more fun when you aren't obsessed with sound. Truly, it gets ugly and you start imagining soundstages that don't exist in real life.

It's worse than crack. Start small with the sex amp and a killer set of headphones. The rest becomes show-off.

Luke knows this stuff inside out, call him and bug him. He'll point you in the right direction.

Also, used high end gear is a good deal. Be prepared to divorce yourself from many shekles, and check out audiogon.com the ebay of high end gear and the only place I trust to find previous owners who worshiped their gear.

Now I have a family and don't dabble in highend gear anymore, but if you're smart -- you'll set up a listening room (don't be gay and buy a system that you use for movies and music) before you start your family and make the guidelines clear to the world.

[Jean]

^ lolz... it's true, some guys go nuts with this stuff. Another thing to be aware of is, once you get hooked on hifi you'll end up looking for records/cds that are "properly recorded" because somehow all your cds/records aren't good enough anymore. Basically good speakers/amps/system will reveal every fricking detail, good or bad.

[z31maniac]

Now I have a family and don't dabble in highend gear anymore, but if you're smart -- you'll set up a listening room (don't be gay and buy a system that you use for movies and music) before you start your family and make the guidelines clear to the world.

I actually mentioned this to the girlfriend yesterday.

However, we only have a three bedroom house. Master, computer room/office, spare..........I'm already having trouble convincing her of my need to turn the spare room into a dedicated listening room.

I may have no choice but to build a dual duty system in the living room.


That's waht I've been looking at the past few days. I want to build a bad-boy 3-way pair of speakers for mains (still with a separate sub) for a 2.1 setup to listen to music with, but also have the mains match up well with a center channel.

However, the only thing I'm coming up with for a center channel that matches a 3-way main is a WMTMW setup for a center.

Our living room is not huge by any stretch of the imagination, so I'm thinking that would be serious overkill.