Cantilope

Try Interwest Electronics on State Street in Murray. They’ve been doing this type of stuff as long as I can remember. Good luck.

By the way, I finally caught myself up this thread. My install required the use of spacers with the Kappas. I had my kappas in belles prior to being used here, they required a spacers with them as well.

I finally completed my room. Sounds fantastic, truly not heard a better HT or 2 channel. My MEH works very well, I am 100% happy.

A comment/suggestion on your build, you should never have a "floating" solder joint. I'd consider using a brad nailed to the board and wrap the cap leads and wires to the brad and solder to the brad. Any movement to those connections my cause an intermittent problem down the road. Maybe you have a nail there and I can't see it, just a suggestion to improve your results.

I like to think the Aleph J is like the Ford F-150 of amps, does everything well and if you only had one class A... that'd be a good one and you'll be very pleased. The others are more of a different flavor and are striving for more of a tubeish sound. The Aleph J is a good old well designed voltage source class A amp. I also like the option of balanced inputs with that build, and I used my Aleph Js ( I built a pair) on my Jubilees and they sounded fantastic. I like the Aleph J better than my McIntosh MC2205 if that helps. These designs are all in a class all of their own. Joe

Rich, I don't know what the BA-2 will put out. If I recall you can adjust the bias higher and higher and with more heatsink the more wattage you get. I also used the burning amp gain stage, which I recall is similar to the gain stage that is in the VFET. I believe that is why Wdecho suggested I try it, as I liked the VFET so much. I think the BA puts out more power than the VFET, but I am not so good at remembering the numbers (Wdecho was better at that than I, and I never could have done it without him). I remember cranking my bias pretty high, way more than 250mv, hell its called the burning amp for a reason and I am a fearless amp builder... As far as side by side, I have never compared them head to head, but I suspect they are both very similar. Something to note, is the gain stage on the BA has the ability to adjust the second harmonic, which adds the tube sound or takes it away. Although I have the tools and Wdecho gave me a tutorial, I haven't yet adjusted this. What you really should do, is build the BA! They are both world class amps and the BA is a cake walk compared to the VFET. My order of preference: SIT-2 (not DIY) VFET BA M2 (had both DIY and NP no I could not tell the difference) AlephJ (which doesn't deserve to be on the bottom of any list) Joe

I too built a VFET and it is my most favorite that I have built to date. I have never posted pictures on this site, but here are a few. A couple of things to note on my build is that I went dual mono, meaning two separate internal power supplies, two transformers and 4 rectifiers, although it does share one on/off switch it's mono from there. This thing is a beast and weighs in at 42#. You can see how it compares to the single power supply of the Burning Amp build. Joe

Beautiful. Nice work!

My Rosewood Belles are factory. That tag should say BK-RL, looks like BK-WO from what I see, so those are re-veneered. They are not MINT, at least what I understand that to mean. Beautiful none the less... might try that trick yourself. Find a beat up pair and have them professionally veneered. They’ll mean even more to you once they are done.

Awesome Scott, nice to see you with these. Those are really nice.

I think that you ought to try a build. You'll never go back...

Since I don't do A/B testing, I really try and not give my opinions. I feel they are tainted... However, with that, I'd say the M2 has more tube characteristics, where as the BA-3 is just a really clean SS amp. The M2 I believe is self-biasing where as the BA-3 is not. I was able to dial the bias a bit higher because I use a large case and large heatsinks on the BA-3 (twice the voltage as the amount in the build guide). The BA-3 also has a POT that allows you to dial in the amount of distortion with a turn. I have not messed with this feature yet. There is a video on Youtube by 6L6 that shows the results of this pot, and that you can introduce as much disortion as you like. Basically going from a sterile clean amp to something that has just a bit of the right kind of distortion. This is a very cool feature. The M2 is much simpler build and set up and is a great "beginner"amp, but I suspect that the adjustability of the BA-3 makes it so I can tailor the sound to my needs, and that over time might give it the edge. The M2 is not as quiet as the BA-3 when there is no signal. As far as the F7 that I removed, not one of my favorites, probably won't be used again, not as good as some of the others I have. I hope this helps...

I was working on an amp not too long ago. A DIY M2 First Watt Clone. I pulled the working board loose from the heat sinks to replace the input wires. When I put the board back I missed tightening one of the mosfets down by just a half a turn and let out the magic smoke. Now I check 5 times, to make sure I seat those mosfets. Mistakes are great learning oppertunites. Joe

I am really happy with it. I feel like I have a bit of fine tuning... but it is close.

So here we are, a BA-2. Looks like it took me about 4 hours to change that out. (sorry the ba-2 boards have no flashy LEDs...) I need to bias these up as it is the first time. I'll throw it on the LaScalas tomorrow and give it a listen. I need a reeb.