M

MrBoat

Audioholic Ninja
Have been totally satisfied with the Pass DIY, Amp Camp Amp. In fact, it's been playing every day since around April of this year. I have it (and all of it's 8W +/-) connected to my Fusion-12 Tempests from diysoundgroup, which have a sensitivity of 98db. It (they) is more than enough amp for those speakers and I could just leave it at that. But, I have other speakers, including some with wide band drivers that I would like to try a little more power with. Also have some matched pairs of some now, rather obsolete JFETs to put to use. The man that gifted them to me, did so, under the condition that I use them so, this is how I intend to do just that.



Heat sinks will be here Monday. I still have to dream up a chassis for it. Hopefully it occurs to me by the time I get done populating the boards. Also have to build the power supply, which is the Universal PSU from diyaudio.com. I'm not an expert at this or, even remotely practiced at it so, I have to dive into all the tech details each time I walk away from the idea for more than a few days or so. It's been a few months since I started looking at the F5 so, I am again, starting over. Also, the threads at diyaudio that deal with each of these topics tend to get a bit nerdy/chatty and can go on for hundreds of pages. Trying to weed through all of that for updates and changes can be a bit arduous, to say the least.

Fortunately for me (and others, I reckon), there are some rather detailed and complete build threads at diyaudio for these projects and a couple different options of obtaining them. Either with a kit containing the boards and BOM, or just the boards, the latter of which, is how I obtained my first ACA amp from there, which was the only option at the time, as they often sell out of these kits. I do have another Amp Camp Amp kit that I had to pre-order months in advance, minus the chassis.
 
Johnny2Bad

Johnny2Bad

Audioholic Chief
An F5 from Papa Nelson is a fairly ambitious build, although with care perfectly doable. Good Luck and keep us posted.
 
Alex2507

Alex2507

Audioholic Slumlord
I saw a DIY amp yesterday that puts out about 40 watts. It sort of dropped the ball on the bottom end compared to an Aragon 4004 (trust me, I have golden ears).

It worked well with this one set of speakers that worked best with 1 or 2 (out of 5 small ports) plugged. Odd, I know, but that's what we did.

Anyway, the thing cost about $450 to put together (including case)! Googling the F5 didn't reveal a price. I'm curious about that.
 
M

MrBoat

Audioholic Ninja
I saw a DIY amp yesterday that puts out about 40 watts. It sort of dropped the ball on the bottom end compared to an Aragon 4004 (trust me, I have golden ears).

It worked well with this one set of speakers that worked best with 1 or 2 (out of 5 small ports) plugged. Odd, I know, but that's what we did.

Anyway, the thing cost about $450 to put together (including case)! Googling the F5 didn't reveal a price. I'm curious about that.
I ended up paying about $70 US for the circuit boards and the parts that go on them, another $25 for the boards for the power supply and I don't remember what I paid for the transformer w/o looking it up. Also, I bought a rear panel kit which includes all the switches, binding posts, RCA receptacles and other hardware IIRC. The heat sinks are around $90 with shipping from Italy and I could have bought cheaper ones, or made those myself with time so, maybe around $350 or so? But, I have spread that cost out over 6 mos by now and nothing I do for recreation is treated as a practical investment. I used to pi$$ away more than that on cigarettes in a month.

The bottom end on the Pass DIY ACA project is fine, really, and is, like about everything else, speaker dependent. OTOH, all of my more powerful amps, like the Denon AVR, ends up getting the bottom end handed off to subwoofers anyway. That has been part of the dilemma with modern audio as far as "I" am concerned meaning, how many speakers end up relying on subwoofers and extra power sources these days. Speakers though, we can start getting into more exotic designs like folded horns and what not, that may compensate the low end somehow, but not without a whole other realm of madness with that trip.

Still, I am in this to tinker and learn as a whole other avenue of amusement from this hobby. I should mention that with the JBL S312 3-way (92db sensitivity) floor stander speakers, even the little 8W Pass ACA amps, there is plenty of low end power and for loud performance.

My focus on the listening end, ever since I started this hobby, has been midrange. While others were fussing over tweeters and bass, I have had little to complain about there and even less so now with subwoofers and waveguides in the house. The midrange is what ends up hooking me and these amps do well there somehow. Especially when coupled with midrange capable speakers like the Fusion Tempests and the little Nola clones. The latter of which, rely only on two, 3.5" (TC9FD18-08) drivers and one 20uf cap.
 
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