Building the Audio Note Kit 1 SET amp...

Whart,
The only upgrades I purchased, due to budget constraints, were better capacitors for the 300B driver board (Mundorf Supreme Gold/Silver/Oil) and a 3 position input selector switch. But I can do other upgrades down the road... that's one of the nice things about building a kit. I'm planning on using this amp with my Reference 3A De Capo BE's. I'll let everyone know how it works out.

Halcro: Thanks for the kind comments (and for showing that you can use emoji's in Audiogon posts... who knew?) Wordpress makes it pretty easy to toss together a good looking blog. Amazingly, many of those photos were taken with an iPhone 4S! Some of them were taken with my old DSLR, but the iPhone makes it really easy to get tight close up shots.

Grannyring: Thanks!

Roxy: Many thanks. What's the rest of your system, speakers especially? Your "System" link strangely points to a thread called "Where's Tvad?" ;-)

islandmandan: Thank you! I'm glad you like my soldering joints. Some are prettier than others but you get better as you go. But man, I nailed the tip of my left hand middle finger yesterday when my soldering iron slipped, and whoa, nelly, let's just say there was some extended swearing going on. Nice blister there now but at least it's no longer throbbing! That was bound to happen at least once. At least there's a good story to go with it. Closest I'll ever come to a sports injury. ;-)

Rebbi,
I never understood how that link to Where's Tvad happened. It's been that way for a long while. I use my kit one with a pair of Klipsch Epic CF-4 speakers. They look like monsters, but actually work great in a small 11X13 room. I have had some great speakers with more glamorous names in the past, but these are really the best I have had overall. They are 102db efficient, and work very well with the Kit One.

By the way, Tvad is a happy Audio Note owner, last I checked with him.

Tvad used to comment here all the time but I haven't seen his posts in quite awhile.

Roxy: I know that a lot of SET owners are drawn to Klipsch because of their high efficiency.

Rebbi, I have a tip for you if you are willing to be a tad unconventional. This mod will cost you nothing, but will have a very positive impact on the sound of your amp and system. Run the output tranny wires outside the chassis and use the binding posts as clamps only. Simply tin the the bare wire and clamp your spade up against the the tinned bare wire. All binding posts, regardless of price and quality, degrade sound pretty substantially. I have done the A/B comparisons and no contest.

You can simply drill small holes next to the binding posts for each wire. You may not need to if you can go out another way. Perhaps the bottom? If you drill holes just place some little rubber grommets to avoid the rough metal rubbing on the wire's coating.

You can be creative and execute this mod in a way to assure the wires will never short by touching each other. It is worth the planning and thought. With a little effort and creativity you will lift the performance of your system as much, if not more, than a tube, wire, or cap upgrade.

Look at my virtual system and see how I did this on my external crossover.

We DIY guys can be bold!