Bottlehead Crack

@velvetx - I was going to order one about a year ago but decided against it because I was afraid I would mess it up trying to build it - ended up getting a Valhalla 2 when it came out. I am very happy with the V2 no doubt -would like o hear how the Crack compares someday.

 

cool! Sounds awesome Hands!

 

I can confirm, the Crack 2 makes for an awesome office rig.

 

Looks Awesome!

 

Has anybody compared BH Crack with Project Ember? Especially with HD 650?

 

How did the two compare?

 

Where's the best place to get those beastly film caps to replace the electrolytic coupling caps? I don't need anything audiophile grade, but the 400V 100uF Daytons at PE are the only thing I can find and I wanna at least shop around. Do 100 uF film caps even come in 160V, or just 250/400V ratings? How critical is the 100uF value? Also, what're people's favorite method of mounting the things? I've seen a few, just not sure which one to go with.

PS for my 2c, the Gold Lion is a decent tube and it has good punch and a really rich tone in the lows but doesn't do anything special in the highs. I feel like it would be an awesome tube for a guitar amp, but I'm 'meh' on it as an audiophile amp tube.

 

Not sure if this off topic but just got my crack + speedball back from repair and now I am having a ground loop buzz between the amp and 2 difference sources (turntable and Bifrost Multibit) where I did not have this problem before installing the sb upgrade (and screwing it up enough to have to send out for repair). I can get the buzzing to go away by taking a spare piece of wire and touching one end to the alum chassis of the crack and a grounded screw on the source. On the bottlehead forums it was recommended that the problem is not the amp, but the grounding of the source. Anyone else have similar issues?

 

Is your Crack plate properly grounded at the power inlet? Sometimes you have to scratch up the surface of the plate or the power inlet a bit before attaching the wires/screws to ensure good contact.

 

I am getting a good connection to the ground. When RCA's are not plugged in everything is dead silent. Its only when I plug in a source. I also tried to ground out the chasis plate to anything other than the source, and no luck. Sound only goes away when grounded to the source.

 

Hmm.. there are so many different kinds of ground loops and each have their own solution. Since yours seem to occur only with connected, the "ground" on your speedball is *probably* at a different potential than the "ground" on your source. When you connected the case of your Crack to the ground-pin of the source, they became the same potential.

Are they plugged into the same outlet or the same surge protector? If not, try that first.
Make sure the ground from the RCA in the crack is properly connected to the ground.
Buy a "cheater plug" to unground the crack from the mains so that the crack grounds with the source. - Eliminate the literal GROUND loop.

I've been reading about ground loops and they scare me (my $$$ component suddenly makes everything bad!). Very confusing.

 

I have a Bottlehead Crack + Speedball powering my HD650 and at the moment i believe my sound card (asus essence stx) is the weak link in my system.. can u suggest some dacs in the 4-600 price range that would be a clear upgrade? i keep reading that the hd650 scale well with upgrades and i want to see for myself. Also, i live in Europe(mostly) so i'd like some suggestions of brands available here (or chinese maybe?)
Could be a dedicated dac or dac/amp(for using sometimes standalone with the laptop) but the main job will be the dac part


And a picture of my bottlecrack, cause pictures of glowy tubes are never too many

 

Try the Bifrost MB.

 

Did a quick search on head-fi and found this: http://www.head-fi.org/t/795892/audio-gd-dac-19-10th-anniverary-ed-with-upgrades-price-drop
It's the same DAC that I use and it's really great. It's located in the US though.

It can also be bought from their own website: http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/dac/DAC1911/DAC19EN.htm with 8% off in January. They will declare a lower value so the VAT won't be as high.

Or perhaps from one of the European retailers, I don't know which is cheapest.