Does anyone have any opinions or experience with www.kitsrus.com amplifier
kits? There's a small electronics supply shop in Toronto named Supreme Electronics
(or something like that), a few blocks east of Spadina and a few doors
down from Active Surplus, that sells them.
Specific details about the kit can be found at
http://www.kitsrus.com/pdf/k50.pdf
I'm looking for a small inexpensive pre-amp and power amp kit to build and
use in my apartment.
Apart from the information I've mentioned above, does anyone know any
place in Toronto that sells DIY hi-fi kits.
The amp will be used to power with some yet-to-be-decided-upon/built bookshelf speakers. At some point I might also want to add a phono pre-amp for an Ariston RD 11s turntable that I have.
I'm comfortable with a soldering iron and multimeter but I don't know
enough to just follow a circuit diagram without an pre-drilled pc-board.
This is why I'm specifically looking for a kit. I doubt I'd be able to
deal with/afford a tube kit. Including power supplies, I'd like to keep to
total bill for the pre-amp and amp under $250 Canadian.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Stephan
kits? There's a small electronics supply shop in Toronto named Supreme Electronics
(or something like that), a few blocks east of Spadina and a few doors
down from Active Surplus, that sells them.
Specific details about the kit can be found at
http://www.kitsrus.com/pdf/k50.pdf
I'm looking for a small inexpensive pre-amp and power amp kit to build and
use in my apartment.
Apart from the information I've mentioned above, does anyone know any
place in Toronto that sells DIY hi-fi kits.
The amp will be used to power with some yet-to-be-decided-upon/built bookshelf speakers. At some point I might also want to add a phono pre-amp for an Ariston RD 11s turntable that I have.
I'm comfortable with a soldering iron and multimeter but I don't know
enough to just follow a circuit diagram without an pre-drilled pc-board.
This is why I'm specifically looking for a kit. I doubt I'd be able to
deal with/afford a tube kit. Including power supplies, I'd like to keep to
total bill for the pre-amp and amp under $250 Canadian.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Stephan
That was the first amp I ever built. It was quite easy and sounded pretty good but, now that there are so many other tested chip designs available, I woundnt consider it now. Something else to think about: by the time you build it, a pre-amp and phono section, and construct cases for them, youre going to have a pretty good investment is time and probably money.
My advise would be to invest in a good integrated amp off ebay etc, like a Marantz, Sansui or NAD, which will no doubt sound better than your collection of kits, and then learn to read schematics and checkout all the great threads here and elsewhere on truely high performance designs. Lots of them also have boards available so assembly is straightforward. Once you build a nice set of separates, you should be able to get your money back out of the integrated amp.
Good luck,
amt
My advise would be to invest in a good integrated amp off ebay etc, like a Marantz, Sansui or NAD, which will no doubt sound better than your collection of kits, and then learn to read schematics and checkout all the great threads here and elsewhere on truely high performance designs. Lots of them also have boards available so assembly is straightforward. Once you build a nice set of separates, you should be able to get your money back out of the integrated amp.
Good luck,
amt
that was going to be my suggestion depending upon his reply to my question. Aced out again. Where in Oregon do you live?
Honest opinion:
A: who needs a kit - just google for the National datasheet and build the circuit shown in the schematic an a piece of veroboard using point to point wiring. The LM1875 is US$1.95 each from www.jameco.com and the rest of the components are about the same. Buy extras of everything on the grounds that this is a learning experience and mistakes are of little financial impact.
B: Figuring out how to get it in an enclose, how to get power to it, how to get a signal out to the speakers and how to ground everything correctly may be the biggest challenges ANDd the source of the most beneficial learning for the next project.
C: Audio performance is about boombox equivalent so look at this as a learning experience (see above). Then if you want to try for something with a little more power and quite a bit better sound check out a amp based on the LM3886. In my opinion this is the best of all the "amps on a chip". A circuit is available from the National datasheet, but if you really MUST have a kit, give consideration to the PM21 at www.marchand.com. You should also look at the other Marchand kits as they are quite "doable" if your experience is limited and the instructions are very clear.
A: who needs a kit - just google for the National datasheet and build the circuit shown in the schematic an a piece of veroboard using point to point wiring. The LM1875 is US$1.95 each from www.jameco.com and the rest of the components are about the same. Buy extras of everything on the grounds that this is a learning experience and mistakes are of little financial impact.
B: Figuring out how to get it in an enclose, how to get power to it, how to get a signal out to the speakers and how to ground everything correctly may be the biggest challenges ANDd the source of the most beneficial learning for the next project.
C: Audio performance is about boombox equivalent so look at this as a learning experience (see above). Then if you want to try for something with a little more power and quite a bit better sound check out a amp based on the LM3886. In my opinion this is the best of all the "amps on a chip". A circuit is available from the National datasheet, but if you really MUST have a kit, give consideration to the PM21 at www.marchand.com. You should also look at the other Marchand kits as they are quite "doable" if your experience is limited and the instructions are very clear.
why not go for one of the well respected kits, from the likes of AKSA amplifiers or the PCB's from Rod elliot for his P3A (if you do find this, and are interested, let me know as I may be able to help you out with a very slightly different version for my own PCB in the near future), as both offer well regarded amplifier kits or PCB's and instructions for well below you intended budget and could offer a more interesting aproach to the realms of circuit building than a simple chip amp (not that these sound bad in any way).
You could do a lot worse than looking at the links below (particularly project 3a on rod's site)
Rod Elliot's Pages
AKSA
You could do a lot worse than looking at the links below (particularly project 3a on rod's site)
Rod Elliot's Pages
AKSA
"Why do you want to build a kit as opposed to just buying what you need?"
Simply put, because I want to. As well, if decent audio equipment is anything like PCs in terms of bang for buck, it's alot cheaper to DIY.
I suspect there are many people using this forum who take more pride in saying to themselves 'I built that', rather than 'I bought that'.
Also, the troubleshooting knowledge one would hopefully develop from DIY might would come in handy. Years ago I bought a NAD 3020 from a pawnshop. It worked great for a couple of years but then one day it started to die (as I recall, first one of the channels wasn't as loud, then the unit started smelling strange. Eventually neither channel worked). As I didn't have any place to store it and I only paid $125cad for it in the first place, I ended up giving it to the Goodwill (not without much internal agonizing).
It would be great to have some idea of how to fix this kind of equipment (or at least be able to diagnose the problem).
Anyway, thanks for the feedback.
At the risk of being chastised for not posting in correct forum, does anyone have any suggestions on speaker kits/drivers for the above discussed amp. They don't need to be super loud or bassy(they should sound good though). They'd be for Tom Waits/Neil Young/classical/fm radio. We only have room for bookshelf size as we live in an apartment. I'd like to keep the cost of them (minus the cost of the cabinets) to $200-$250 cdn.
Thanks again for your comments
Simply put, because I want to. As well, if decent audio equipment is anything like PCs in terms of bang for buck, it's alot cheaper to DIY.
I suspect there are many people using this forum who take more pride in saying to themselves 'I built that', rather than 'I bought that'.
Also, the troubleshooting knowledge one would hopefully develop from DIY might would come in handy. Years ago I bought a NAD 3020 from a pawnshop. It worked great for a couple of years but then one day it started to die (as I recall, first one of the channels wasn't as loud, then the unit started smelling strange. Eventually neither channel worked). As I didn't have any place to store it and I only paid $125cad for it in the first place, I ended up giving it to the Goodwill (not without much internal agonizing).
It would be great to have some idea of how to fix this kind of equipment (or at least be able to diagnose the problem).
Anyway, thanks for the feedback.
At the risk of being chastised for not posting in correct forum, does anyone have any suggestions on speaker kits/drivers for the above discussed amp. They don't need to be super loud or bassy(they should sound good though). They'd be for Tom Waits/Neil Young/classical/fm radio. We only have room for bookshelf size as we live in an apartment. I'd like to keep the cost of them (minus the cost of the cabinets) to $200-$250 cdn.
Thanks again for your comments
if you want to look for speaker kits in that sort of price range I would have a look at Creative sound solutions' website, as they sell things from full kits including boxes down to just the bare drivers, so you should be bale to find something suitable. However, you might also get a few extra replies if you were to post in the loud speaker forum.
"At least you could supply the correct link:
www.marchandelec.com"
Oops! I inevitably mis-type that one on the first try every time. The net is full of URLs where some else registered the most obvious one first.
www.marchandelec.com"
Oops! I inevitably mis-type that one on the first try every time. The net is full of URLs where some else registered the most obvious one first.
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