PC Gainclone

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At last, some pictures of my Gainclone.
No digital camera, just good old analogue, so it takes time...
The film ended before I could take a picture of the amp with cover on, so when I have it, I will post it here.
The box is from a Schneider 386SX/20 I bought for 17.50 Euros.:devily:
I'm impressed with the sound of this little amp, and very low noise.
And mow, some photos.
 
carlos, or you attach the the file with the browse button below when you post or like you did now, but that only works with online links, in other words weblinks

and when you attach files there is a maximum size, but dont now how much KB

Greetz Rudy
 
oh, thankx, Rudy

Here it goes.
Believe it or not, I was measuring DC offset.:cool:
 

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...and no comments, guys?
Is it so bad??!:bawling: :bawling: :bawling:

I didn't finish the film yet, but let me tell you, so that you can imagine:devily: , the the cover is painted black.
The amp is all black, with a gorgeous blue led.
I'll post the photos as soon as I can.
Today I'm going to my father's house with my Gainclone, to test it with his Allison speakers (4 ohms).
He got really impressed at my house, with my Epos 11s.
If it plays well with his Allisons, he is going to make a Gainclone too.
Yes, my father is a (now retired) electronics technician.
40 years of electronics experience.
He was impressed how you can make an amp these days with so few parts.
And a good one.:nod:
 
Taco said:
It's great, i like the UTP wires :). And it's not bad, they can't expect Peter Daniel finishes all the time ;) .


Thanks, Taco.
The truth is that Peter Daniel's designs ashame us all.
He must have heavy machinery at home, or a very steady hand.:rolleyes:
I would love to see Matttcattt's car amp, and Skinnyboy's water Gainclone.:devily:
Come on guys, where are you?
Skinnyboy, are you alive?
Beware, water and electricity can kill.:eek: :bigeyes:
 
carlosfm said:



Thanks, Taco.
The truth is that Peter Daniel's designs ashame us all.
He must have heavy machinery at home, or a very steady hand.:rolleyes:
I would love to see Matttcattt's car amp, and Skinnyboy's water Gainclone.:devily:
Come on guys, where are you?
Skinnyboy, are you alive?
Beware, water and electricity can kill.:eek: :bigeyes:

I have just ordered the parts for my car amp, they should arive thursday, and i should have some pictures of my progress by friday/saturday.

Your amp looks very good :) a strange alternative to p2p wireing IMHO. :p
 
Congratulations Carlos!

Whenever anybody actually finishes a project that I have promised to do myself, I get down on myself for (sometimes) not having finished yet and (mostly) not having started at all.

Really, the silence is just everyone's envy. We wish that it was us, also. That is why Peter generates such silence and noise. The silence is from those of us who aspire. The noise is from those who can't quite believe it is true.

:)ensen.
 
Nice job man!!! I have done a couple of gainclones but haven't finished one yet. I am still in the design process(and probably always will be) because after seeing Peter's work I drool and work hard to match it.;)

But really it is nice to see the designs everyone has. I mounted my components on a small board as well, except I only used one board and I also mounted a thermal switch on the heat sink that closes at 117 degrees Farenheit to turn on a small fan until the switch reaches 92 degrees then it opens, turning the fan off.
The fan is powered by a small 12VDC wallwart that I had laying around. As of right now, I have everything mounted on the back of an unfinished pine "WELCOME" sign that I had in my computer/electronics room.;) Everything is just sitting around on the board and even though I used some old Allen-Bradley resistors and cheap electrolytic caps, it sounds pretty damn good.
I used 4.7 uF metalized poly capacitors for the input and a stereo 50 Kohm Bourns pot that I stole from an old Lightning audio car amplifier.

So all in all I have to say good work dude!
 
3 audiophiles 'till 3 am

Nuuk said:
Hi Carlos,
I will be very interested to hear how they get on with your father's 4 ohm speakers.


Hi Nuuk,

Well...
Yesterday it was until 3 AM...:rolleyes:
Me, my father annd my brother.
I connected my amp to the pre out of my father's AMC amp.
The Allisons played well, but if we pushed the volume past the middle position (very loud!) the woofers flapped!
Bonc, bonc!:devily:
Well, we pushed it hard!
Those woofers were repaired a year ago, because the foam surrounds had gone.
Maby they are not "as good as new"...
But the sound was good, with a bass or much better deffinition and impact than the AMC.
I like to call it "slam".
Then we tested with some old Tannoy Stratford that my father also has but doesn't use.
I never liked the sound of this speaker.
But for the first time I heard good bass from these speakers.
Treble is bad, almost non-existent.
Those old Tannoy compression tweeters...
Than I said: look, I can bet that the best speakers here are the ones you have in your bedroom.
He went and got those.
Very cheap but very good Tangent Model Three I brought from London some years ago.
They are 8 ohms/87db, and have a little 10cm woofer and a little plastic tweeter.
But we never thought that these minuscule speaker would fill the big room.
They did.
What a sound, this is it!
Bingo!
My father didn't want to believe what he was hearing.
But the deam speaker is excelent.
I bought them new in London, where I was in vacancies, some five years ago for around 100 Euros.
My father had asked me to bring some small speakers from London, and this is what I bought.
Does Tangent still exist?
They never had distribution here in Portugal.
 
Hi Carlos, I hope that you are not too tired!

I haven't tried 4 ohm loudspeakers but your results with the other speakers are similar to my own. The 22 year old Mordaunt Short Pageants I have tested with most have never sounded anywhere as near as good as they do driven by the Gainiclones!

And my new experimental full-range speakers also fill the room with sound - it's weird listening to this sound and looking at those tiny monoblocks and trying to believe that they are responsible for it!

I have just tried to find Tangent through a search engine but there is no trace of them. Richer Sounds who used to sell Tangent Speakers no longer list any of their models. Your father's speakers the M3's were very highly rated when they came out a few years back (as were the smaller M2's).
 
man, I'm tired

You don't imagine the pain it was to get up today at 7.30 AM and come to work.
Anyway, yes, Tangent speakers were very raved at that time.
I was in a Hotel near Oxford street, and I got the underground to west London and travelled some 50km to hear them and buy them (while my wife was at the theatre:devily: ).
Beautiful city, by the way.
I forgot to say that yesterday we managed to "see" the chip's protection circuit in action.
With the Allison speakers (4 ohm), playing at silly levels, at a certain time they lowered the volume continuously.
Up and down.
But this was just for testing, because we never listen to music at that volume.
If my speakers at home were 4 ohm, I would do my Gainclone different from what it is now.
Instead of 24 volts secondaries, I would use 22 volts.
And instead of LM3875s I would use LM3886s.
Looking at the graph, it seams to me the LM3886 is more tailored to work with 4 ohm speakers.
For 8 ohm speakers, ther LM3875 seams better.
You can't have it all.:dodgy:
 
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