K-12 Tube Amp

Here are some pics of the basic K-12 Tube Amp (which i am listening to right now: Album: "Cash" - Johnny Cash)

This is how it arrived out of the box, there really isnt a whole lot to it.

I think that most of the components are soldered on in this picture. The instructions that come with the kit are very good. This was the first time I had done any soldering onto a board like this, but it wasnt nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

This is how it looks "stock" and mounted to a pine board. This is how i will keep it for a while until I get a good feel for how it sounds. The only thing i added so far is a bleeder resistor on the largest capacitor so that it wouldnt hold a charge and potentially zap me when i move it around. Soon I will do a few upgrades and see how the performance changes. I am going to upgrade the 0.22uf capacitors (6 of them) to higher quality ones. I bought some Dayton Precision Audio Cap's for about $1.40 each. You can go nuts and spend way more on Cap's but these ones are supposed to be good. This is the one upgrade that came the most recommended and is supposed to have the best results. If I am happy with the sound after that upgrade I will make a permanent enclosure for it.

Right now the sound varies from good to awesome depending entirely on the audio source; The best sound quality comes directly from a CD source (not-compressed), then from my record player (a little variance from record to record), then my iPhone mp3's (compressed files), some mp3's sound much better than others probably based on who ripped them and the settings they used. Female vocals especially come across very nicely. I really only listen to nicer stuff on it, acoustic stuff or nicer female vocals stuff... Death Cab, Jack Johnson, Elliott Smith, Regina Spektor.... stuff like that.

The speakers I am using are the Fostex Fe126en full range drivers (single driver system, no crossover). They are in a slapped together open baffle frame right now, basically just to hold them and point them in the right direction. They sound very nice. The low end is absent but getting them in a proper vented and tuned (~65 hz) cabinet will help that. The mids and highs are great, at times the highs can be a little much, this can be tamed with a Baffel Step Compensation (BSC) network (like a crossover but much more simple, i think its one inductor and one resistor). I will wait and see how they sound in their actual cabinets before i mess with that.

This is approx. what my cabinets will look like, these are the same drivers i got.

Theres a long weekend coming up so maybe I will be able to make the cabinets then. So far I am really liking my attempted low budget audiophile system. Turning out the lights in the evening and listening to some nice sounding music while watching the tubes glow it quite a peaceful experience. More to come.