Not wonderful. I'm still wrestling hum, but more importantly, I'm preparing amps for volume production at present and the BOM is driving me bananas..... but has to be done. Add to that the flu, and general malaise of advancing years and monsoonal humidity in Melbourne, and one is not overly gruntled.......
Yours in good humor,
Hugh
Yours in good humor,
Hugh
OK Folks,
Hum now completely fixed, quiet as a churchmouse!
General malaise now banished, seasons optimism prevails, and I've made the first GK2 sale.
Owner believes the system is 'transformative'. He can't drag himself away from his CD/SACD collection. Good news.....
After Christmas I will commence production, full steam ahead!
Cheers,
Hugh
Hum now completely fixed, quiet as a churchmouse!
General malaise now banished, seasons optimism prevails, and I've made the first GK2 sale.
Owner believes the system is 'transformative'. He can't drag himself away from his CD/SACD collection. Good news.....
After Christmas I will commence production, full steam ahead!
Cheers,
Hugh
Hi Hugh
Any news yet on the GK2?
I have a job again driving a semi truck for the sugar season. Picking up 25t of sugar syrup from a small mill on the Atherton Tableland and bringing to down to the Mulgrave Mill in Gordonvale for processing into sugar. 6 months work every year. We may become grey nomads in the off season.
Mark
Any news yet on the GK2?
I have a job again driving a semi truck for the sugar season. Picking up 25t of sugar syrup from a small mill on the Atherton Tableland and bringing to down to the Mulgrave Mill in Gordonvale for processing into sugar. 6 months work every year. We may become grey nomads in the off season.
Mark
Hi all,
It’s clearly been a while since the last post on this thread back in June but with Hugh well on the road to recovery, perhaps it’s time to resume the discussion.
Anyone that’s been following the thread from the start will realize that after Steve’s original build, Hugh has some hum problems with the first production item that of course was overcome, but it did have the effect of delaying him starting on three further GK2 orders for Jens, AndyR and myself. I think he originally wanted to convert his own GK1 as a test and demonstrator version first up but was so busy, it just didn’t happen.
What people would not know is that a couple of days before Hugh became ill, he found a half a day that he could clear from his many other commitments to finish ‘stuffing’ these GK2 production boards so that they could finally be finished and tested. As it turns out, rather than installing one of the completed boards in his own GK1, he rang me and asked if I was free to bring mine over and for him to install and test the board as something of a Guinea Pig. I know he was concerned with the delay in delivering to Andy, Jens and myself so there was no way could I say no. The deal was simple. I of course paid for the board plus installation time whilst testing time and any time taken sorting issues was Hugh’s problem. It all worked very well with Hugh spending quite a few hours after installation, cross checking actual multi-meter readings against all the GK2 design parameters and making a few final adjustments that would be replicated in Jens, Andy’s and subsequent boards. At last there was a big grin and my now GK2 was carried inside, hooked into Hugh’s system and switched on.
It sounded excellent as it did also in my system the following day when Hugh popped in for a 10 minute listen but that’s all I’ll say about its performance in this post. A few days later I tried ringing Hugh to see how Jen’s and Andy’s boards were going, only to find that Hugh was in Hospital and just out of surgery so all thoughts of GK2’s evaporated. I spent a lot of time over the next week or so visiting Hugh in IC and also preparing for a 6 week trip away from which I’ve just returned. So very little chance to properly listen to the GK2 that consequently had less than 10 hours under its belt when I left. But I’m home now so stay tuned.
It’s clearly been a while since the last post on this thread back in June but with Hugh well on the road to recovery, perhaps it’s time to resume the discussion.
Anyone that’s been following the thread from the start will realize that after Steve’s original build, Hugh has some hum problems with the first production item that of course was overcome, but it did have the effect of delaying him starting on three further GK2 orders for Jens, AndyR and myself. I think he originally wanted to convert his own GK1 as a test and demonstrator version first up but was so busy, it just didn’t happen.
What people would not know is that a couple of days before Hugh became ill, he found a half a day that he could clear from his many other commitments to finish ‘stuffing’ these GK2 production boards so that they could finally be finished and tested. As it turns out, rather than installing one of the completed boards in his own GK1, he rang me and asked if I was free to bring mine over and for him to install and test the board as something of a Guinea Pig. I know he was concerned with the delay in delivering to Andy, Jens and myself so there was no way could I say no. The deal was simple. I of course paid for the board plus installation time whilst testing time and any time taken sorting issues was Hugh’s problem. It all worked very well with Hugh spending quite a few hours after installation, cross checking actual multi-meter readings against all the GK2 design parameters and making a few final adjustments that would be replicated in Jens, Andy’s and subsequent boards. At last there was a big grin and my now GK2 was carried inside, hooked into Hugh’s system and switched on.
It sounded excellent as it did also in my system the following day when Hugh popped in for a 10 minute listen but that’s all I’ll say about its performance in this post. A few days later I tried ringing Hugh to see how Jen’s and Andy’s boards were going, only to find that Hugh was in Hospital and just out of surgery so all thoughts of GK2’s evaporated. I spent a lot of time over the next week or so visiting Hugh in IC and also preparing for a 6 week trip away from which I’ve just returned. So very little chance to properly listen to the GK2 that consequently had less than 10 hours under its belt when I left. But I’m home now so stay tuned.
Well my GK2 now has about 20 hours up.
As thoroughly noted at the start of this thread (but to quickly refresh), the GK2 has the same output stage as the GK1 but the input/gain stage is now based on a NAKSA generation design rather than the earlier AKSA. Whilst previous modifications to my own GK1 had been primarily to this gain stage and had proven very worthwhile, it appears that in retrospect, they had clearly not managed to change it into a NAKSA. The GK2 is a high quality board with a superb layout that’s a bit shorter than the GK1 but with equivalent mounting holes. The upgrade itself is straightforward; old board out, new board in, rewire. It quickly fitted to four of the original bolts and standoff spacers and really the time taken to upgrade was primarily from the tedium of rewiring where, more often than not, Sod’s law applied and the original wire was a centimeter or so short. For most DIY’ers, the upgrade should only take a couple of hours.
The only part that took a bit of concentration to get right was inserting the volume control correctly into the circuit. Of course I’ve retained my superb TKD stepped attenuator whilst adding a few nude Vishay Z foil TX2575 resistors for pre-attenuation to better manage the GK2’s additional gain in my system. I’ve also kept my Platinum Teflon’s even though the need for premium input caps is not so critical to the GK2 design. Though much smaller that the GK2 standard input cap, there is no downside to this that I can pick.
So how does it sound you asked? In a word, superb! It is unambiguously a very solid upgrade indeed and that’s pretty amazing given the well-documented qualities of the GK1.
Clean, open, spacious, natural but exciting are descriptors that come immediately to mind. Now I’m not a reviewer, but if you are still interested, I’ll certainly try to describe the changes in detail in a further post. Just let me know and I’ll do my best.
The good thing Andy is that yours, Jens and mine were all finished together so they are 99% complete - the 1% represents a couple of minor changes to be done that emerged during the testing phase. I know when I left, Hugh was quite chuffed as to how good mine sounded and that it wouldn't take very long to finish the others and was looking forward to getting them on their way. I still can't quite believe how pear shaped it all went a short time after.
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