Bottlehead Crack


Anyone hear built a Bottlehead Crack? Love to hear what your experiences have been
128x128zavato
I built one. I used too much heat on the transformer so I paid for and they sent me a new one. It was entirely my fault. A rookie mistake. The directions are superb with photos and the forum is really helpful.
The sound is glorious. Detailed, warm, spacious. I use a MacMini-eastern electric DAC-Modwright pre-amp to the Crack and with Sennheiser HD600. I highly recommend this amp but not for in the ear monitors.
Well, I ordered the Crack- waiting ever so patiently. I'll be using HD600's with it. I am impressed by the forum.

when soldering I always try to use, if space permits, a Hemostat as a heat sink. I hope not to fry anything. I hate soldering IC's so what I always do these days is use IC sockets, solder those in place, and then just plug in the IC. No more fried ICs. No ICs in the Crack- yeah! I am looking for a DAC- will consider the EE.

At some point down the road I might get the speedball. Who knows.

I'm looking forward to this build as I have been itching for a DIY project for a while. My last project was repair a Sony XBR TV that died n 2013. I refused to accept its death, and with the aid of Google I learned this was a familiar issue with my particular model. $20 or so in parts later, TV is back up and running (2 components on the power supply board failed)
Sony XBR has best picture. It was worth to repair. I still never seen any flat pannel that has colors so natural.
would a NAD Viso HP50 headphone work with the Crack? It is 32 ohm (which may be too low I dunno) what would be the adverse affects?
It will work but not sound it's best. The output impedance of the Crack is too high. Low frequency response will be down maybe 3 db or so

Ideally you want to sprun headphone with at least 150 ohm input impedance with the Crack.

Sine my original post here I've had my Crack for ver a year. It has the speedball and otheR mods. With the right headphones (hd600's work very well) it's a stellar headphone amp