Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Making the middle hole larger is the goal

Maybe a goal for the cat to poke a paw through and tear up your LF driver cone 🐱‍🏍

I don’t know how common they are

LMGTFY...

Obviously I checked before posting, which is why I said 0.8mm (widely available) rather than my first guess of a small diameter long cut length routing bit which would have been 0.75mm

even if our workshop has collets that small

They're (anything under 3mm) usually either 3mm or 1/8" shank regardless of cutting diameter

it takes for fricking ever to make any cut with cutters that small

Obvs. You'd only use the little cutter for finishing the internal corners.

Good luck finding a CNC job shop with a 0.8mm cutter

That's moot since velocio has already found a shop which can do the work he wants, but in general there are shops which are familiar with working at that level of detail in all materials. <1mm cutting is not available in every shop because many shops don't have the RPM on their spindles to work at that scale, but it's also not uncommon.

I suppose I’m used to working on a larger scale. Laser cutting is clearly the way to go though.

Laser cutting is clearly the way to go

Except that the people who are actually doing this stuff day in and day out are using a router 🙂
You could laser cut, but it might be challenging to meet the aesthetic demands due to the heat affected zone.

I’d be happy with a black edge on walnut veneered ply or MDF 🙃

You can blacken the edges with a router if your feeds and speeds are wrong. A friend told me...😊

Laser cutting that would be fine.

Buying the walnut veneered ply might be harder, and solid walnut sheets aren't gonna be big enough

Got it. Thanks!

Got a couple of these - free, collect from SE15. Used, missing the little spikes, unless I can find them. Pm if interested.

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I’ve gone all-tube for a bit. Such electricity. Many heat.

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Looks exciting.

Hope your home insurance is "all risks". ;-)

Looks exciting.

Posted this on Retro Rides where the build is, and for 3W per channel it kicks some ass. Not maxed it out yet but I've already had it up antisocially loud and it wasn't clipping. It’s not got the low down thunder that my big MOSFET amp has, but I think that’s to be expected given a) it’s not 100W per channel and b) it’s running very small output transformers which will limit the low-down response. All in, it sounds really good and I can see how people running high-quality output transformers find this an excellent hifi amp.

Temperature-wise, it COOKS. It is a seriously hot-running amplifier and I expect the electric meter was spinning in disbelief. It has that distinct hot valve amp smell, which I guess is the hot transformers. I know class A transistor amps run hot, but I wonder if I can do something about this (aside from adding a bit of airflow) by limiting the HT current directly on the output valve anodes. This would limit the current running through the output transformers and thus reduce the heat generated. The knock-on effect would be lower current draw from the mains transformer so that would also generate less heat.

I’ve been following this on retro rides such a skilful build

Just discovered Nagra Hifi... unobtainium for me but with the scientific vibe of old Quad gear which I love.

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Very much want that preamp. 15k though, ooft.

Just want to touch all the things

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they started out making field recorders/portable tape recorders which is where the switchgear style comes from

<3

Nagra SN series are so cool.

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/rec/nagra/sn/index.htm

Current hifi nagra stuff is insanely overpriced.

Those Nagra recorders were the industry standard for film recording (before digital).

Adam Savage geekery...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqlk6RaFRjs

Thanks! Remind me - what's your username on there?

All this nagra talk @TheButchersDog takes me back to university and doing sound recording on two of my friends student films, had to learn how to use a nagra to do it.
They’re still making them, and they’re still used on film sets, they just record digitally now onto sd cards. Didn’t know they did hi-fi though.