Greetings once again!
So for Christmas I got another kit that I’d been wanting. Christmas Eve the UPS guy shows up with my Crack kit from Bottlehead. Woo! I could hardly believe it showed up before Christmas.
The photo is the finished article. Bottlehead has been around for quite some time, I’d been following them for a while since before I came to Ohio. They sell tube based kits as well as finished equipment but beyond that they also have a stellar reputation for their gear to sound absolutely amazing, well I’m here to tell you that this kit does not fail to deliver.
Where I find the patience for some of this I’ll never know, it took me 2 days to paint the top plate and end bell on the transformer and I still wasn’t happy with it but oh well I’m not going to sand it down and paint it again. It looks good enough for me. After laying out the chassis I began soldering “by the numbers” basically.
The kit comes with a CDROM that contains a .pdf of the instruction manual. I’ve never put together a kit that came with better thought out instructions than this one. They are clear and lead you through the entire process. If you can read and understand basic kit building terminology anybody with basic soldering skills can build this kit. Here’s the best part, even if you don’t, but can read and I mean read everything, Doc gives basic soldering instructions in the manual. So like one of the guys on the forum said, “go to Radio Shack, pick up a few terminal strips and a grab bag of cheap resisters or similar and get some soldering experience in, for the cost of some cheap parts you can learn to solder in about 30 minutes.”
Well I’ve been slinging solder for a while so I skipped through that and got right to building my kit. Here is the naked laid out plate, and the finished view.
and since I took my sweet time on this build, I was not going to mess it up, I wanted it to sound as good as possible so, slow and steady was the theme and boy did it pay off. Two 4 hour sessions later…viola!
I have learned several things from all the different builds that I’ve done.
1. you don’t have to use so much solder that you close the terminal holes, a good joint only requires enough solder to join the wire/part to the terminal, make sure the joint is hot enough and the solder will just flow. Only use enough to get the job done, if you have to go back later and add something you missed or move a part, removing all that solder can be a huge pain.
2. neatness counts, heaven forbid you have to go back and work on it or troubleshoot a problem like hum or no sound from one channel. If your work isn’t neat and tidy well it’s going to be that much harder tracing the circuit out and tracking down your problem. Plus, when your buddy asks to see the underside of the chassis you want to be able to show it to him without having to explain that yes you put it together and not your 4yr old. :P The other aspect with regards to neatness is that routing of wires and such can help keeping noise out of the circuit, or like in the Crack, the two large resisters that look like big white logs in the middle of the plate dissipate a lot of heat, any wires routed near them could be burned or at least have the insulation melted from the wire if they’re too close. So be mindful of what’s touching what when you build something like this.
So at this point I have well over 50 hours on my amp, I’ve settled on the tubes that will reside in it for the time being. I was lucky enough to purchase an extra 6080 power tube and several 12au7 variants. Currently the power tube is a PN JAN 6080WC, Bottlehead included a very nice Sylvania GB6080 but after running the amp in for about 8hrs I noticed that something was generating a high pitched tone and I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on, well the Sylvania is either faulty or microphonic, but swapping it out for the NOS JAN 6080WC the amp is dead silent now. I had tried a CONN branded 12au7, the included and very nice Elecro~Harmonix 12au7/ECC82, a Pinnacle Audio 12au7, and currently my favorite a GE 5 star 5814a.
I’m listening to some of my favorite vinyl right now, currently spinning is Masterpieces by Ellington, the sound is very detailed. This sure separates the good from the bad, you can hear EVERYTHING! LP’s that I had previously enjoyed quite a lot, have surface imperfections that I just hadn’t been able to hear before now. Well this amp sounds simply amazing. No apologies! I’d rather be able to hear every little thing than not.
I played Mingus Ah Um earlier and WOW! That one is a 180g reissue and sounds amazing. Ok before I go much further what am I actually listening with? Ahh headphones! Well as luck would have it my wife also got me for Christmas a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7b headphones :D These are fantastic cans. They are noise canceling and do a great job of making me feel like I’m in a sound proof room all by my self listening to music. The Crack amp was designed with higher impedance cans in mind and the AT’s are 300 ohm so I’m in good shape!
Ok so I have Crack and new headphones and an obvious addiction but the only cure is probably to listen to more music ;) The music through these things is VERY lifelike, the sound stage is wide and dynamic. Natural is probably the best single word I could use to describe the whole experience. Doesn’t seem to matter if I’m playing a CD from my laptop, MP3’s from my player, or spinning a LP, at least with recordings of high quality, the music sounds natural. I have a couple live performances and if I close my eyes it’s not a stretch to imagine being there. I’ve had several experiences where detail I hadn’t heard or noticed before startled me because I didn’t realize it was from the recording and not something going on around me.
I love this amp, cost of admission is $220 plus shipping, add to that a day or three of your time for assembly and you’ve got yourself one serious performer. Bottlehead has a very active DIY community, lots of help on their forums, plus lots of other kits to feed your habit! If you’re looking for a first kit, or even just something new, give them a very serious look, you will not regret it.
I’m going to go flip my record and listen to my Crack some more ;) have a good one!
