Where do you see the chatham for 20$ ?
Ist it 6as7g or 12Au7?
https://vacuumtubes.net/RES%20Audio%20pages/6080.html
I bought 1 a week ago and they had 1 more left.
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i will be reading through this thread . if anyone has any good headphone recommends for this amp or the upgraded models let me know! hd800 would be my ideal i guess or maybe a comparison for the 600 6xx and 660s ? anyone heard all three with this amp? thanks. i wish i could use my he6se and my focals
Thank you,i will try my Luck 
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What were your thoughts on how the tubes sounded? What cans do you normally pair with your crack? I’m mostly looking for good pairing with the HD600
Hd600 and 650 for sure or 800s, dt880 600 ohm or 990 600 as well or the t1.2, an eikon or auteur, r70x come to mind immediately, depends on the sound you are after
If you wanted to get a tube amp you can use the focals with sub 1k, that is doable, but most tube amps sub 1k will struggle with an he6
the upgraded power cord is another good option along with the speedball. add’s a little bit more and gives u a 90 degree right angle connection instead of sticking straight up.
im not great at terminology lol. i mainly got it for the 90 degree connection, and was surprised it slightly made everything a little bit better.
Haha last I checked with those guys they had only one 6080 equivalent tube selling for $250 a pop. I think it was the GEC 6AS7G. Good to see their stock isn’t completely dry.
check out the felix audio echo. works well with lower impedance HP’s.
realistically, the crack is mainly geared towards a very limited number of HP’s. stuff like the felix echo and hagerman tuba, play well with a lot more HP’s.
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I use Eikons. I haven’t rolled too many tubes on it. The ones on it now just have a nice full sound imo.
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idk what that upgrade is however power cords absolutely make a difference. its kinda crazy actually its like magic but its there in a blind test for me.
How would you compare the Echo (mk II?) with the Crack?
thanks. im getting the bellari pre amp with single tube, but if i can runt he focal elegia off that what about building their cheaper pre amp and hooking that to the jot 2 for both the he6se and focal and seeing if i like the bellari or bottlehead pre amps most or if you think id be better off with a pure tube amp for focal
As @joshua_g suggests if you want to run something like an elegia off the amp, an echo or tuba, woo wa6 2nd gen, or a cayin ha-1a mk2 are good picks, but it all depends on the sound you are after. The only tube headphone amp at/under 1k that I think can even get the he6 moving to me is the quicksilver headphone amp, but I really wouldn’t put an he6 on there expecting to get an amazing experience fwiw (but it can drive planar decently well which is very uncommon for the price bracket, to get good planar performance typically you need to go much higher)
You can go for a pre into jot, but again it depends on the sound you are after and it’s pretty different from an actual tube amp
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thanks ive never really found a tube amp that made things sound like my mt-34 tube speaker amp. so warm and fuzzy but not too much. with clear highs. almost too recessed IMO. but i think my elegias need more bass and crisper highs so looking for that. ive only tried pre amps that are hybrid and they are clean but dont give me as much tube as i want. the bottlehead Moreplay kit seems like its pretty tubey but idk i almost feel like buting the crack speedball and then using that as a pre whenever i want to use lower impedance gear and as an amp when i get my 6xx or whatever.
The MT-34 is a push pull EL-34 amp AFAIK, it’s an unusual topology fro headphone amps.
Almost all the reasonably priced headphone amps and most of the not so reasonably priced ones will be single ended. Balanced tube amps just aren’t a desirable topology for headphones, the issue is that the Push/Pull part basically removes a lot of the desirable second harmonic distortion.
Your best bet if your looking for that sound might be to find a low wattage push-pull EL84 speaker amp and use the headphone out on it, but headphone out quality on speaker amps can be all over the place.
i just need something that can handle low impedance or a good review of the crack or speedball as a pre amp or the actual bottle head full tube pre amp being good. im sure it is.
Has anyone tried doing a DIY power cable using similar parts to Bottlehead’s kit? You can get 20 AWG gauge stranded core pretty cheap. But it seems Bottlehead uses what appears to be 10(?) strand wire, which is surprisingly difficult to find on Amazon.
100 strand Red/Black Wire https://www.amazon.com/BNTECHGO-Silicone-Flexible-Strands-Stranded/dp/B01F8PO6VK
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there are a lot of high quality OFC quality cables on amazon i like the waudio ones.
I made one up using 18 gauge wire, and a higher quality power plug.
You need to ensure you find heatshrink that is at least 4:1 and big enough for the plug.
What likely matters in the design is the twisting and braiding.
It was better than the $20 hospital grade cable I had in my system at the time.
If your building 1 cable, the kit price isn’t bad, assuming you don’t have the wire or heatshrink, if your going to build a lot, it gets less of a value.
FWIW I compared a number of power cables in my system, with the caveat I have a PS audio power conditioner between them and the wall, and I suspect that makes the differences more significant.
The sound differences were not subtle, my system does not allow for fast switching of power cables, and I was expecting the differences were going to be subtle enough it would be hard to pick a winner, so I took notes of each cable, and swapped multiple times. I really didn’t need the notes.
Having said that a $200 or $300 power cable isn’t a significant part of the cost of my system, I wouldn’t spend a significant portion of the cost of your system on power cables, or any cables for that matter.
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