Wooow. Appreciate your time in answering this one. It will certainly be helpful for the ones boarding into this journey.
Sadly I’m not a big DYI’er myself. I’m very good in disassembling/destroying things. Not the other way around.
I’d like to shift the question towards alternatives. Given that this Bottlehead amp – take the Crack, for instance – probably has a known circuitry, what are the options to purchase this from the market? And specially, for how much more? 2x, 3x, 10x more?
Thanks much!
PS: just trying to reach a balance here: timing vs budget vs hedonism.
There are several ways to have your Crack and eat it too. Err… Cake. I meant cake.
Check the BH forums for a gentleman who will build your Crack for you. The price is reasonable, and the turn around time is pretty good. Considering you won’t need to invest in soldering gear yourself, you actually save money going this route.
Or, there are some people on Etsy who build a few at a time and sell them. Might be a good way to go as well. Like this guy:
As far as different amps that are basically a Crack circuit by different people… I wouldn’t know. Sorry.
Paul Birkland is one of the wizards at BH, I believe he builds these as well…you could not get any better than that!! It would come from the “factory” so to speak…BH is not a large company and its a mom and pop business.
From BH site:
Many of you know Paul Birkeland, a.k.a. PB, from his years of tech support on the forum and from his contributions to the Bottlehead product line including our biggest selling Crack OTL headphone amp. PB set up his own shop a while back so he can be a stay at home dad with his son in the Bottlehead tradition. From his lab PB can handle construction of kits for those of you wish to have someone competent build yours for you. And he can also repair legacy kits that we no longer support here at Bottleheadquarters.
Paul’s business is independent of Bottlehead, thus we will let you deal directly with him for price quotations. He can be contacted at pb@bottlehead.com
Alex
NOTE: I am so tempted to start building stuff for folks. I have all the tools and time, its just the labor costs would be high…the labor cost for the BH Mainline which costs $1299 is $800…so the crack would probably be around $450 with speedball. $400 without.
Hey Friends!!! Check it out…a quick video with a fun montage unboxing of the Bottlehead Crack OTL 1.1 Headphone Amplifier! I hope you dig it, more audio gear videos to come! Give me a like on the YouTube video if you don’t mind and let me know if you want to see part 2 and 3 of this video series in the comments! Happy Sunday have a safe and great start to your week.
Its amazing to me that labor costs are as high as they are…$400 for a crack, $450 with speedball and $800 for a Mainline.
I think its worth the labor if you really want one of these amps. You would be getting a solid build for sure from on the the real “experts”.
And the cost of shipping a built tube amp is probably $50 to $70 for a crack and I sold a Mainline and doubleboxed the amp, shipped with FEDEX and it cost me $162…the amp got there ok and no issues.
Mainline is a much bigger amp…and you have a floaiing amp to deal with.
Shipping a built amp like these takes some careful packing…
So when someone is selling one of these, its often $400 - $600 for a Crack…when the kit cost is $315 - $430 and you add labor + $400 labor your paying on the low end $700 to on the high end $1000.
When you see one for sale for $400 - $600 know if its running and well put together your getting a GREAT deal for a GREAT amp…
It irks me when someone tries to low-ball an honest seller when the cost and labor is what it is.
I think it took me about 8 hours of hands-on time to build my Crack. That doesn’t include the time spent waiting for the glue to set, the stain to dry, or the finish to cure on the base. It doesn’t include the 4 coats of spray paint on the aluminum plate either - spray, dry, sand, rinse and repeat. I’m sure an advanced and practiced builder could knock out the soldering and basic base assembly in half that time.
Either way, there is more to building a Crack than soldering, is my point, and if I were to put a value on my time to assemble one for a customer, I wouldn’t charge less than $75 an hour. Especially if I had to support after sale issues that inevitably arise on even the most well built items.
Glad to see someone else using (latex or nitrile?) gloves to handle tubes. It’s not so much about protecting printing on the glass or base (bigger deal with expensive NOS types) but the grip is better than anything else I’ve ever tried. No accidental slippage and the grip makes insert and removal of tubes from sockets so much easier. A box of 50 latex disposables was 10 bucks at pharmacy. I can usually get a dozen or so uses before they tear thru. I’ve never tried the nitrile type which are a little more expensive but look to be more durable / reusable.
I just ordered a Crackatwoa. I love building stuff. I’ve recapped and repaired some vintage electronics so I’m pretty good at soldering. This will be a fun project. Can’t wait to hear how it sounds with my HD800S and Auteurs!
Hi Alex. When you have a moment, I’d appreciate it if you had any thoughts on some Crack upgrades: power cord, and Mundorf Caps and Blue Alps Pot.
I’m considering options of building it myself (which I intend to do someday) or having a non-civilian (professional) build this near-term one. The Head Amp Builder on Etsy will build it for $250 with SB (labor only, no cosmetic finishing); he then charges $150 additional for the upgraded Caps and Pot.
I was curious if you had experience with these upgrades and whether worthwhile. Thanks!
The Alps is a pretty significant improvement over the stock pot. The stock one has pretty bad channel imbalance at low levels. You can buy the Alps for like $15 on various sites.
Output caps will give you better performance in the bass region. I used Solen caps and the bass got both tighter and “more”. Caps vary in price - I paid ~$100 for the Solens I use.
As far as the power cord goes, I wouldn’t bother with it. I’ve built my own power cords, used aftermarket cords and, stock cords. My verdict: if your signal wire (RCAs) are well shielded, the power cord doesn’t matter. Otherwise, a power cord with shielding (which the BH version does not have) is what you’re looking for. In my experience different power cords don’t make a difference in how a piece of equipment sounds but rather, they effect nearby low level patch cables and those ultimately can cause a change in sound.
Ha that was funny i have a brother from another mother!!
Two trains of thought,spend lots of bucks on an already very well optimized design, ie the Crack. Add Speedball. Done.
the other is save your money and buy the Crack-a-towa and get upgrades that really do improve on the Crack…hmmmm?
That said the upgrading the stock pot, if you have low level tracking issues is a good thing…$15 or so from parts connexion if i remember and get the dollar mounting pcb…dont solder to pins…
All other mods IMO humbly dont do much…yes even those big fat caps!! nice to look at but…well…YMMV. Some swear by them, they did nothing for my ears…and if you really want to add those BIG caps…the Crack is limited in space but the Crack-a-towa was made for folks to play with these.
If your cracking, the two diodes in the AC power input is a nice thing for RFI…less than $2.
Other than that, the Crack with speedball and that pot are just fine!
Power cord…waste of time, I built one, no real difference audibly…snake oil IMO.
!
