DoZ for headphones... first report

[Lisandro_P]

I've been playing with my DoZh in a semi-final form... here's the details:

Construction: Well, the amp itself it's pretty much the same as shown in Rod's schematic. The psu is identical except for the remote power-on control on the same board that fires up the amp with remote +5v. The amp board holds two separate amps (sharing gronund), and the only mods here were 1uF poly for the input caps and 100nf bypassing every single electrolytic. The 12-pin connector goes to the output transistors, whose sink lies over the top cover (not shown here), which itself came from one of the output transistors off my old JLH. The transformer is a 25v 75VA E-I i've salvaged from some junk in the past, and was shielded with an Al strip.
Mechanically, the case is made of stainless steel, bent and painted by dad (owns metal shop), and cutted, drilled and sanded by me. The front will be 4mm thick copper which still needs a couple of drills and then the whole sanding/finishing/lacquering buisness.

Sonically: In one word? "Yummy!" It sounds quite similar to the JLH'96 (no surprises here ) and the level of detail it's just the same. No noise, no hum whatsoever; in fact, the amp is dead quiet with no input. I'm using two outputs and with 300-330mA of quiescent current it has more than enough power - it can drive a couple of good headphones to distortion point.
One of my main test CDs right now is Pete Gabriels' "Up". Things like the eerie electric piano on "Sky blue" sound incredible, with a level of detail that the headphone out on my CD player simply can't match. Pete's line about the sun going down in "The drop" sent shivers down my spine... the sound is well balanced, defined, and the bass is tight and fast. No high frequency nastinesses or distortions at all. Tool's "Aenima" sounds great too, and i had to keep the volume down in order to retain my hearing after a couple of tracks (i really wanted to notice the tiny details ). Floyd's "The wall" and "The final cut" were a delight to listen too, and i easily spent an 1 1/4 of an hour listening to music on my workbench.

I *CAN'T* wait to have this one finished. I know the name might not be of the liking of everyone (Rod and Nelson should shake hands like good sports), but this is a seriously good amp!

[Lisandro_P]

Another small one... you can see the front on the works here:

[Lisandro_P]

The finished beast The front plate looks kinda funny on the pictures, but still, here there are:

[Lisandro_P]

Love the eerie blue led...

[paulb]

Nice job. I don't believe I've seen a copper front panel before. I think I might use up my DoZ boards to build something like what you've got here.
Thanks for the listening report, I'm keen to try this now.