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Does anyone know how to open a SinglePower amp. It appears to have a few hundred hex nut screws but neither my Metric nor American Hex set fit correctly. Thanks for help. I have already replaced it but am still curious.
Follow Ups:
You might take a close look at the screw head and compare with this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives
Of course, you'll still have to figure out what size screw driver to use but it might help you get close.
You can use TORX (or "star") bits on hex heads, try some
and use one that fits tight. That's if they're not security
types with a pin in the center.
nt
No it's still locked up tighter than a bank vault. I have not gotten the tools you mentioned, but intend to. I have a new unit I'm breaking in, a Felik's Elise. I will wait to comment on how they compare until the new amp is fully burned/broken in . (Strange language to describe a process of improvement or maturation.) The owners manual says at least 30 hrs of regular use.
I am using the stock tubes. They do provide an upgrade to the 6SN7s but I told them I will probably be rolling in my oversized collection of them. The power tubes are Winged C, 6H13C, a Soviet? Russian 6AS7G. I just got some Sylvania Gold Brand NIB 6080s I am itching to try. I am not sure which 6SN7s I will eventually use, but I think it will be best with a clean clear type. I'm leaning towards a Sylvania W or the perennial favorite of many, the Tung Sol Round Plate.
The one time I heard this amp in Copenhagen, it immediately reminded me of my SP MPX3...which was a very good amp but quite expensive compared with the Elise).
I don't know anything about the 6AS7G, but we both know a lot about the 6SN7GT (and don't forget the 6F8G). Before i started rolling the power tube, I would try some vintage 6SN7GT and 6SN7W tube, and everything in between. You should hear differences. The Elise I heard (with input tubes I don't remember), was slightly warm, but nice, not dreamy at all. You might see how the warmth varies over different mfrs and vintages of 6SN7GTs. My guess is, again, that you will hear the difference between an RCA 6SN7GT grey top and a 6SN7W. My favorite has always been the Raytheon T-plates, very beguiling.
I'm not so sure how well the Elise does with low, low impedance headphones. My MPX3 did very well with K701s and, not surprisingly, HD650s.
I can concur The Elise so far, still breaking in, is on the warm side of neutral but not overly so. The warmth is enhanced by my use of Cardas Gold Reference interconnects. Yes I know which 6SN7s to try. I own both the KXX by AKG but mostly use my Sennheiser HD 700s. I am embarrassed to admit that I have forgotten what the impedance for each is. So far the Senns sound very good but so far the amp doesn't quite have the air, resolution and detail the SinglePower had.
I know people hate Mikhail now for his criminal actions, but for whatever reason his crazy, messy, amp designs sounded good until he lost his mind. I think I know what happened to him but PM me on that one. I might switch to more precise cooler wires such as all silver. I have some other interconnects around despite being in exile. Do you think the AKGs will be a better match impedance wise?
Feliks makes an upgraded Elise. That what they told me was their top of the line amp, essentially was. Same basic concept just more expensive and I suppose maximized components. I was very unhappy about their recent price increases (up 50%) but they got a deal with Focal headphones. Focal headphones are to be shown and demoed at shows, with Feliks amps. They developed better packaging etc. as well.
The Russian winged C, 6H13G the 6AS7G equivalent I would think would be on the cool side but I have a lot of tubes to try , even the vaunted WE 421s. I am anxious to try the Sylvania Gold Brand 6080 NIB tubes I recently bought in anticipation of this amp. Those are rare birds, to my eyes anyway, never have seen another pair. Plenty of regular Sylvanias but no Gold Brands.
I think I have a real job in front of me if I were to try most of my 6SN7s and equivalents. I have to ask the engineers if I can try those British ECC32s or 33s. I will give the Raytheon T plates a shot. I didn't know you liked them so much.
I will try to get the tools you mentioned, I already have a set of small star head screw drivers.
Edits: 12/15/17
I managed to get the I/4" plug socket off the SP. But only the exterior comes off. The connecting elements seem to stay intact inside I might attempt electrocuting myself by plugging the headphones in without the external decoration. Perhaps that will fix it. ----time ----passes---- It didn't, it just pushed the phone plug into the amp. It is in the belly of the beast. Would you mind being the tube executor of my estate's tube collection. I didn't dies and I'm back tp square one.
I've heard that a Mikhail Rotenberg can be found on Linked In. I just wonder if he is well enough and honest again and will fix it. Right now its a door stopper.
Anyone got a better idea, please share and do tell.
Thanks in advance.
First, the AKGs are much lower impedance than HD headphones, and thus harder to drive for an OTL.
As for Mikhail....I doubt it. He also used to hang out on EBay, but his tubes were not that high quality. I've forgotten his EBay name. Supralover, I think, or something like that. The Supra, by the way, was a timebomb in most (all) cases. There were many discussions about its shortcomings, some by Kevin Gilmore.
I don't know what tubes he was trying to sell on Ebay, but when he sold me my "Extreme" he added in some good rare tubes to complicate the deal, like Bendix, and blatant counterfeit "Mullards". An odd and unpredictable stream of things. I was lucky to get any functional amp at all at that time. He had begun failing to deliver product, big time, at that point. Then it stopped all together. I had managed to figure out where his family was living in Colorado and let him know. Add to that my ex wife had some perhaps?'rough' relatives living in town, whom I asked to pay him a visit. I don't know if they ever did, or what they might have said, but I did get an amp when most didn't.
I didn't know he went back into selling tubes or anything else. I'm not sure what the Supra was but remembered the PPX. Do you mean the "Extreme". Mine never blew up but one channel went out.
No, I don't. Maybe, it was the Extreme. When the Shit started to hit the fan, I followed up on the problems one MPX3 owner was experiencing. I had a voltage setting for the power tubes with an underrated switch and the PS caps needed some discharge caps. I fixed these things and never had any other problems. It played like a dream, until I sold it and bought my DNA Stratus.
That SP amp is giving me such pain I think it will remain a door stop for now ,or until Mikhail delivers some penance to his former customers. I might be able to get someone to look at it but I haven't any schematic.
I gave in and decided to roll in some really nice NIB looking testing Sylvania 6SN7 WGTs, into the Elise. I bought those tube a few years back. I always found the WGTs to have a very clean, quick, detailed sound heading into the cooler end of the spectrum. Despite doing that I am certain I am not finished rolling. Those GB Syl 6080s are crying to get moved to first into the queue.
The stock Russian tubes supplied by New Sensor are labeled Tung Sol GTBs. They weren't as bad as I had predicted they'd be, but I know I can get better sound , completely subjective of course if I run through a few of my favorites. I found only Raytheon GTBs and a pair made in Japan with a cursory search. My collection is big and I know I have them stored somewhere. Please remind me which you favor, thanks
I must say the HD 700s are a better match with 150 ohm impedance vs the 62 that my AKG Kxx have. Are the 701s much different? I use to use them exclusively and liked them a lot. Do you know what the difference is between those 2 ?
701s vs.7xx (or something like that). I have an older pair of 701s - very old. They were my favorites. Think od the K7xx as 701s on steroids. They have a somewhat more exgerate bass and wider channel separation. The mid-range is a bit more forward, but they still have good balance. More recent 701s may not be as laid back as mine where, which are now hels together by duct tape. But yes, both will be harder to drive due to lower impedance and high senitivity. For the WGTs, not the B model, I don't hear much, if any, difference between Sylvania and Rytheon. The B models for all 6SN7s have higher max plate voltage, but can still sound good. 7N7Bs are nice, but you have to use the adapters. Jac Music sells both.
Edits: 12/23/17
The Sylvania 6SN7WGT is a completely different animal , than the 6SN7 WGTA. I bought some pristine WGTs at the time that Len was selling, I told him of my purchase from ??? ebay?? and he very quickly said you didn't buy WGTAs did you? He was adamant about the WGTAs sound quality and some other aspects of the tube. I considered his word on 6SN7s as a GURU andhe was right as usual. I had bought some WGTAs well before that conversation and they didn't have the PRAT of the WGTs not to mention an overall sense that I wasn't hearing everything.
After rolling the 6SN7s ,I also took out the Cardas Gold REfs and replaced them with Cardas Cross. The Cross is the least expensive they make but in this case they worked well.
I was happy that the amp must really use the tubes, input first stage of amp in the pre amp section. In some of the Headphone amps it s seems as though the tubes are decorations, and perhaps as I age my hearing is not as good as it used to be. I think I can find those Raytheons I know I had quite a few of them.
At this point I find only one significant flaw with this amp. It seems to get congested during crescendos or just a mash up of rock fury I use to test it.I guess I have to add that the dynamics are muted just a tad perhaps as a function of the first concern. I think both will be resoled as the unit is played more.
finally I found my old 701s to sound better in my memory than the 7xx (thanks for the correction). Overall a bigger soundscape and truly beautiful tone, accuracy, never congested or distorted, black silence etc.
Good Morning, I am glad you are enjoying the Elise, I had one last year and it served me well. It is a little warm so tube rolling can help. If you want a very neutral sound, and have the amp run very cool, you can try EL11 for drivers and EL12 for power, you would need adapters for these. I tried running all 6sn7's and it just did not have the power. I upgraded to the Euforia this year when it first came out. Have serial number 5, this is a much better amp, all around. I got in at $1100, now price is over $2000. Comes with the PSVane 6sn7 and that is a good sound. I usually run TS 5998g and TS 6sn7g's or Visseax 6n7G with adapter (Joybringers) and GEC 6AS7G's this amp has the upgraded transformer, silver wire, Dale and Haddock resistors,high quality Mundorf and Nichicon capacitors and the Heavy duty teflon gold-plated tube sockets,and this is a definite upgrade in sound quality and clarity is much improved. The Elise is a good amp, check out the Elise thread on head-fi.org page, lots of good advice and tube rolling advice. Feliks is supposed to come out with either a 2A3 or 300B amp this year. I use a Schiitt Gumby multibit dac and either Senn 800 or Hifi man phones. Good luck with it.
Edits: 12/25/17
When I finally decided to buy the Elise I asked Lukasz if I could upgrade the amp with better caps and what ever else I could improve in the component end of things. At that point I thought the Elise was $850 the price I had actually just seen a month before. I was still able to get the Singlepower to work with some coaxing. In addition I sat on my hands getting by on my "Project Ember". He told me that was what the Euforia was, the "same" amp with a better transformer/s and upgraded components and some changes applied to both amps.
When I asked him to give me the price on both to consider which I would go with, I was not happy to say the least. I can tell you more in a PM but I was pissed. I had been enquiring on and off and I was never told of the huge price increase I almost didn't buy it.
You should know me by now I don't generally approve of adapters because being a semi-purist, you really don't know if the adapter is made with good materials nor do you know if its really engineered correctly. It also put more stuff in the signal path. Why don't the manufacturers see what's going on at hed-fi or any such forum and build amps to take the better sounding tubes? That said I use an adapter on my ember to take 6SN7s I don't think the SS output tage does that amp any favors and the silly frakenadapter monstrosities some people make are almost comical in my mind.
All that said I might be lured into trying adapters some day. While answer email and writing this I listened to a couple of symphonies. ( I am not a classical music guy but like it some days.) I would rather listen to speakers but I now live in an apartment and I prefer a decent volume.
Which headphone do you think would sound best with my Elise. I like a big soundscape detail prominent midrange and don't care for heavy overloaded bass. I may just upgrade this amp it sounds good but I want more. I can afford it but I never really considered headphones as my main system until recently.
The little changes I have made have helped, I think I have GEC 6AS7Gs but have to search. I have so many good tubes that I saw little reason to gop with the fancy Chinese drivers he made an accommodation for me in that regard. Honestly the Russian Tung Sols were not as bad as I thought they would be. I rolled the Sylv. WGTS and replaced them with a rare bird a near entirely chrome domed pair of the civilian Ws that were simply called Sylvania GTs from the early 40s, these are not the common "bad boy" GT .
Thanks for your advice.
I had the Ember before getting an Elise. Tried the 6sn7 adapter the dual 9173 tubes, they sounded okay, but wanted more. The Elise filled the bill for awhile, but the constant tube rolling told me I was looking for more. On Head-fi you will find a member @Hpynos1, he was the one that first contacted Lukasz about the Elise, he helped with the prototype, and did all the initial testing and use. I got to know him and he is quite sharp. The Euforia is a spin-off his Elise, he wanted silver wire wire connects and the better resistors and capacitors, and bigger and better transformer. He is quite knowledgeable and is willing to experiment with his amp, and has made many improvements, not as far as most people would go. He made the adapters for my EL11 and EL12Spezials. He did surgery on the tubes and removed the bases, and ran silver wire to a new adapter base, so the tubes have been altered so they do not need external adapters, they are essentially different tubes. Lukasz does not recommend these tubes and H ran extensive temp test from all parts of the amp with stock tubes and with the El's and the results were amazing. The transformer never gets hot, barely warm really. When he wanted more from the Elise Lukasz was considering offering an upgrade to the Elise, but looking at the changes it would not have been economical, so the Euforia is the result of H's design work. The huge price increase was unexpected to say the least, I bought the Euforia before production so I got a nice ediscount. Then the price went through the roof. I use it as a preamp out as well, and it is quiet and very powerful. The chasis looks the same but the new amp is actually larger in all dimensions, but same style. As far as headphone's I have the Senn 700 as well and it is pretty good. I had the Beyer T1 first version and thought it quite good. For myself, I prefer tthe Senn 800, this amp was made for it. H has the Beyer T1 and has it wired directly into the amp with silver wire. Like I said he tries a lot of things, outside the box and has gotten great results. He has a thread there on Headfi the Euforia thread. It was going great guns until the price increase. At least outside of Europe we don't have to pay the Vat tax anymore. At the price of the new Euforia, they have to understand there are a lot of competition at that level.
nt
It sounds like the manufacturer has deliberately chosen to use an uncommon size of hex nut screw to discourage peeking inside. Maybe he chose Whitworth as opposed to metric or American?
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