Monday, November 23, 2009

today I finally managed to find the time and desire to update my little dot mk1 with some better componets which I have laying around since a couple of weeks.

Well what did I do?

and how did it changed the setup?

First of all the amplification dropped a lot with the 'new' tubes. Instead of the 25% I now need to increase the output to 85% for the same amplification.

And the sound did get much worse, specially at higher amplification levels. Right now I'm going to burn the tubes in for the next 48 hours to see if it improves, but I don't really think so.

Fazit?

opamp was worth it,
tubes, were a waste of 40$ for this amplifier. Maybe one day when I get my hands on a little dot mkIV I have better chances? We will see. I actually lust more after a mk VII or even Woo Audio 6 Special Edition which has all the features I could think off, maybe in a year or so when I also got some grado SR-325is or RS-1. My reward for another visa?

Hey I can wish and dream, but first comes a vacation in utah and antelope canyon! Maybe finally hawaii...

Right now my wallet has to recover for the next 6 month. These last 2 month were way to expensive and fixie left me flat broke...

correction after listening to these new tubes 5 more minutes. They sound absolutely awful to my ears.

So I will try to burn them in the next 5 nights and see how they perform. Afterward I will try to use the other opamp I got for comparison.

5 hours later and the sound becomes worse and worse. They are getting more and more static noise and I think they are broken. Time to send the seller a complain...

15 hours later and it's obvious the tubes are just really bad and I guess I stick with what I have till my hearing is more improved. So I can actually take advantage of the finer details in the music.

so my currrent expirience without a car is slightly frustrating.

Example I had togo to woodland 3 times this weekend at very odd times

friday 5pm - 11pm
saturday 6am - 1pm
sunday 6am - 1pm


Now since it was ridiculous cold I ended up renting a car for these days, which translates into another 200$ spend for renting the car and gas, frustrating at best...

So I'm looking now into the so called zip cars to see how this concept works. Which is basically a car sharing approach and could be cheaper. Not sure about it yet.

Why didn't I ride my roadbike out to woodland?

It was just to cold and dark, that's the only reason. But this is something of the past. Cause after renting the car I had the possibility to go shopping at REI, Cycle gear and Ikea which translates into

  • very warm heavy jacket
  • very warm light jacket
  • very warm heavy pants
  • underarmor shirt and pants
  • a new blanket and covers (Extremely warm and comfy, but makes it harder to get up in the morning)
  • candles, gluehwein and chocolate...
  • very warm gloves
  • sturdy pair of leather gloves
  • and some other stuff
so this should keep me warm in Germany and specially here.