This is the story of building the Elusive K Amplifier. It’s a personal journey that started with a strong desire of building a power amplifier and ending with studying psychoacoustics and perception relativity.
It's a dual mono, fully differential, balanced, no capacitors in the signal path, no global negative feedback, class A amplifier.
Being biased at more than 7 A per channel it’s a muscle amp capable of driving very low loads with ease.
It sounds super clear, crisp and musical in the same time. The imaging is immersive, play a good recording and it will take you there.
But this is not about building the best amplifier, or the most powerful or anything like this, instead it's about encouraging the less experienced amateurs to summon up their courage and start building something, anything.
As you’ll see, I’m myself a newbie in electronics, but despite this I managed to make an amplifier that makes me real proud.
This has a lot of content, more than 250 pages of text, graphs, and images. Since it was too big to paste it here, I divided it in six parts:
• Intro
• First Stage
• Power Stage
• Building it
• Measurements
• How does it sound?
These self-explanatory titles were written in the order listed above, like the chapters of a book, and is best to maintain that order when you read them.
I’ve attached some schemes and picture of the build, but you’ll find much more inside. Also, you can see the original pictures here.
Most schematics presented here can be simulated in the browser with only a few clicks.
It's a dual mono, fully differential, balanced, no capacitors in the signal path, no global negative feedback, class A amplifier.
Being biased at more than 7 A per channel it’s a muscle amp capable of driving very low loads with ease.
It sounds super clear, crisp and musical in the same time. The imaging is immersive, play a good recording and it will take you there.
But this is not about building the best amplifier, or the most powerful or anything like this, instead it's about encouraging the less experienced amateurs to summon up their courage and start building something, anything.
As you’ll see, I’m myself a newbie in electronics, but despite this I managed to make an amplifier that makes me real proud.
This has a lot of content, more than 250 pages of text, graphs, and images. Since it was too big to paste it here, I divided it in six parts:
• Intro
• First Stage
• Power Stage
• Building it
• Measurements
• How does it sound?
These self-explanatory titles were written in the order listed above, like the chapters of a book, and is best to maintain that order when you read them.
I’ve attached some schemes and picture of the build, but you’ll find much more inside. Also, you can see the original pictures here.
Most schematics presented here can be simulated in the browser with only a few clicks.
Last edited:
Very cool idea using a PC case for the amps
I have 3 diy amps that someone built and passed on to me. They would look cool with the replacement of the parts like you have done
I have 3 diy amps that someone built and passed on to me. They would look cool with the replacement of the parts like you have done
I’ve just started to read all out list of “ things to read and do “
I’m enjoying it so far. Great work and thanks for all your time with this post, I 100% agree with you on how hard it is to ask for help on audio forums.
Been there, done that many times
I’m enjoying it so far. Great work and thanks for all your time with this post, I 100% agree with you on how hard it is to ask for help on audio forums.
Been there, done that many times