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Bottlehead Crack or Beyerdynamic A20?


parlophone1

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I have had Beyers DT990Pro 250 ohms for a few years now.

 

Would like to buy the matching amplifier.

One reason is obviously to use all the potential of cans. The other is my tube stereo-amp and my CD player do not have headphones output, so I have no place to plug in the Beyers.

Was thinking of various solutions to the problem, from little Ifi amps or Fiio, desktop, portable etc.

However, most of my headphone listening is connected to the stereo rig in my room which include record player, so finally the choice would be regular headphone amp or maybe combo amp/DAC.

 

I read a lot of good stuff about tube Bottlehead Crack build kit. I believe I can assemble the kit myself. OTL tube amp seems to be appreciated by many for this kind of headphones.

And at the same time, dedicated transistor Beyerdynamic A20 can be much easily get here in Europe.

If I would have that kind of cash, my choice would be Woo audio amp, but obviously that is no go.

 

Any advice what amp should I get, any experiences among forum members?

 

Thanks...

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Price is what was on my mind. Bottlehead is arround 200-270. A20 also that price or may be a bit more. Plus customs duties and other expenses if import from US to EU. Second hand I may find but I was thinking about new. Nothing against going for second hand except risk if somthing would be wrong and no guarantie. I like to try second hand goods before buying and that narrows my choices considerably.

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  • 6 months later...

I just posted some pictures of my bottlehead s.e.x. build on the tube forum. This was my first soldering job, and the s.e.x. is a bit more complex than the crack, I got a few pictures of the underside. The crack should be a pretty simple build for you, and you can roll tubes, upgrade caps, really make it sing if your into the diy stuff. The bottlehead forums are super helpful and alot of guys will post their own mods and upgrades. I think the appealing aspect of bottlehead stuff is the community and upgrade options/support for your project. I haven't got into diyaudio forums and projects, but I can assume the guys over there are helpful too.

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Thanks for your input.

The thing here is that I did not have the chance to listen any Bottlehead derivatives so far.

Especially that this build is not that common across the ocean.

All you say is true, the community is very helpful, and so on. 

Acquiring the build kit in Europe takes additional expences too.

So what I was actually hoping to see if anyone has direct experiencies with bottlehead amp and beyerdynamic headphones. 

Othewrvise, for me would be sefer rout to go with dedicated Beyerdinamic a20 amp, which itself has positive reviews in this regard.

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