rick57:
...just click the "email" button at the bottom of my post. At the moment, I'm not accepting any more orders, but I will reopen orders for the spare boards in late January.
BTW - wire transfer in the US really sucks! I don't know why, but the fees are outrageous, and the only wire transfer I've received so far took a week and a half to come through...
...just click the "email" button at the bottom of my post. At the moment, I'm not accepting any more orders, but I will reopen orders for the spare boards in late January.
BTW - wire transfer in the US really sucks! I don't know why, but the fees are outrageous, and the only wire transfer I've received so far took a week and a half to come through...
Contest winner!
oops, looks like I forgot to announce the contest winner yesterday...
I can hardly believe it, but Dennis Hui pegged it at exactly 734 boards. Honourable mention goes to chris ma, who came very close with a guess of 733, and Gina with the third closest guess of 744.
Congratulations Dennis... one free pair of boards will be sent with your existing order!
oops, looks like I forgot to announce the contest winner yesterday...
I can hardly believe it, but Dennis Hui pegged it at exactly 734 boards. Honourable mention goes to chris ma, who came very close with a guess of 733, and Gina with the third closest guess of 744.
Congratulations Dennis... one free pair of boards will be sent with your existing order!
Congrates Dennis Hui,
I guessed 734 first but then I thought everyone would try even numbers, what if no body got it spot on. Then 733 would be closest to 732 and 734 I should get the price, tried to be clever costed me. Well good fun 😀
Chris
I guessed 734 first but then I thought everyone would try even numbers, what if no body got it spot on. Then 733 would be closest to 732 and 734 I should get the price, tried to be clever costed me. Well good fun 😀
Chris
chris ma said:
For someone who has trouble counting change, this can
only be attributed to DIY beginner's luck. 🙂 I know those
boards will be put to good use.
Thanks again to Chad and Grataku for making this PCB
purchase a success. And a big thank-you to Grey and
Nelson for making this all possible.
Dennis
Payment Reminder...
OK, just a friendly reminder to everyone that the rev1.0 order has ended, and if you sent me a request for boards, I need to receive your payment by December 20th. At this point, there are still 36 people who have not contacted me regarding their payment.
If you ordered boards, but didn't get the email with complete instructions, send me an email message to let me know.
OK, just a friendly reminder to everyone that the rev1.0 order has ended, and if you sent me a request for boards, I need to receive your payment by December 20th. At this point, there are still 36 people who have not contacted me regarding their payment.
If you ordered boards, but didn't get the email with complete instructions, send me an email message to let me know.
734 pcbs........ WOW
When it comes to the shipping process, 734 pcbs is a major effort for one individual to handle alone. For those of you out there with the ability to be generous, don't you think we should reward Chad with a token payment for his efforts. Designing and managing a project of this magnitude is sure to be a physical and emotional drain.
Let's give Chad something to smile about this Christmas,
John Inlow
When it comes to the shipping process, 734 pcbs is a major effort for one individual to handle alone. For those of you out there with the ability to be generous, don't you think we should reward Chad with a token payment for his efforts. Designing and managing a project of this magnitude is sure to be a physical and emotional drain.
Let's give Chad something to smile about this Christmas,
John Inlow
Carpenter,
NO. If we start talking token payment then I want royalties as well! My payment comes by getting $5 boards instead of $30 boards.
Instead of cominc up with crazy ideas go ship the alpha boards, and refund the extra money! 😉
NO. If we start talking token payment then I want royalties as well! My payment comes by getting $5 boards instead of $30 boards.
Instead of cominc up with crazy ideas go ship the alpha boards, and refund the extra money! 😉
$5.00 boards......
Hi grataku,
It's great being able to get cheap boards. I know how much I've enjoy getting a good deal on my pcb layout. What I'm getting at is the tremendous effort that Chad's delivering to the group. You worked hard too, I really appreciate your efforts. It's just that my little effort at mailing off to 23 people has made me aware of how much difficulty Chad has to go through. I thought that if we pitched in a buck apiece, Chad would feel rewarded for his hard work as he stuffs, addresses and mails out all those envelopes. If the average order is for 6 pcbs, then he has 122 people to care about. That's a lot! And, 122 dollars isn't going to make Chad want to quit his day job.
Take care,
John
Btw, the Alpha boards have been mailed. I'm in the process of tallying up the costs in order to send out the refunds.
Hi grataku,
It's great being able to get cheap boards. I know how much I've enjoy getting a good deal on my pcb layout. What I'm getting at is the tremendous effort that Chad's delivering to the group. You worked hard too, I really appreciate your efforts. It's just that my little effort at mailing off to 23 people has made me aware of how much difficulty Chad has to go through. I thought that if we pitched in a buck apiece, Chad would feel rewarded for his hard work as he stuffs, addresses and mails out all those envelopes. If the average order is for 6 pcbs, then he has 122 people to care about. That's a lot! And, 122 dollars isn't going to make Chad want to quit his day job.
Take care,
John
Btw, the Alpha boards have been mailed. I'm in the process of tallying up the costs in order to send out the refunds.
Carpenter
I expect Chad not to loose one cent out of this deal. He can charge for time, envelopes, gas for his car, the stickies he uses to print the label, ink for printer, electricity for the computer, everything. He's getting some help too from other members in the area.
I expect Chad not to loose one cent out of this deal. He can charge for time, envelopes, gas for his car, the stickies he uses to print the label, ink for printer, electricity for the computer, everything. He's getting some help too from other members in the area.
Do not get me wrong, I think I know you mean good John.
But I do not think we should put any $ amount for the work that Chad and Grataku did. What they offered is priceless(IMHO). I think if they are not the absolute right-right-righteous minds kind of guys, hope you people know what I mean; I would like to burn a nice audiophile test CD for them.
Any other ideas?
Chris
But I do not think we should put any $ amount for the work that Chad and Grataku did. What they offered is priceless(IMHO). I think if they are not the absolute right-right-righteous minds kind of guys, hope you people know what I mean; I would like to burn a nice audiophile test CD for them.
Any other ideas?
Chris
Chad,
I'm curious how many people actually ordered the boards.
(No, I'm not going to try guessing this one. 🙂 )
Dennis
I'm curious how many people actually ordered the boards.
(No, I'm not going to try guessing this one. 🙂 )
Dennis
My only concern is that Aleph-X design was made available to the DIY community by the graciouness of Mr Pass and he has been nice enough to allow over 700 boards to be made for us to reproduce it. I don't know how he would feel about someone else profiting (even if only if by a tiny amount) from his designs.
I'd like to see his thoughts on the matter before we do anything like this
I'd like to see his thoughts on the matter before we do anything like this
With the large number of boards going out I assume that there will be a large number of orders for parts to populate these boards.
It might be worthwhile for some of us to get together and do a group buy on some of the components. While caps and resistors are largely personal taste. Transistors like the IRFP044 and MPSA18 are pretty standard. Just looking at Digikey the IRFP drops from $2.59 ea in single lots to $1.41 in 1000 lots. The MPSA18 drops from $0.23ea to $0.05 for 1000
Would anyone else be interested?
It might be worthwhile for some of us to get together and do a group buy on some of the components. While caps and resistors are largely personal taste. Transistors like the IRFP044 and MPSA18 are pretty standard. Just looking at Digikey the IRFP drops from $2.59 ea in single lots to $1.41 in 1000 lots. The MPSA18 drops from $0.23ea to $0.05 for 1000
Would anyone else be interested?
I´m interested, but same as with toroids and heatsinks, shipping this stuff from US to europe may be a problem. Anyone wants to do a group purchase in europe / germany?
You need only 8 MPSA so the saving on them is neglectable.😉 As to the output mosfets it's better to find somebody who would buy the whole lot and do measurements as well and then sell matched sets.😉
I've already taken care of mine.
I've already taken care of mine.
Speaking of big purchases, what's going on Peter?
have you called r-theta? I think times are mature to get that order moving.
have you called r-theta? I think times are mature to get that order moving.
Thanks for the expression of gratitude, John, but contrary to popular belief, I have not found this task to be a burden.
Physically draining? Maybe a little. Emotionally draining? Definitely not. Certainly, it has involved a lot of hard work, but this has motivated me to work quickly and break some bad hobby-habits. During my years at University, I simply did not have time or money to devote to DIY audio projects, and so the hobby morphed into one of learning and dreaming. I ended up reading a tremendous volume of audio-related technical literature, building a handful of small test circuits (little DAC boards and discrete opamps - cheap and quick), and a head full of ideas (accompanied by a large pile of napkin scribble schematics). On the plus side, I had seen and studied in depth almost every conceivable opinion and viewpoint in most areas of hi-fi music technology. On the down side, I had almost completely fallen out of the habit of actually building usable equipment (isn't that the whole point of this hobby?), and for better or for worse, these habits stuck... Witness my DSP design, which has been nearly complete for over a year and a half - I even have all the parts - yet it has not materialized in physical form. Compared to the feverish rate I used to build, I'd slowed to a snails pace. My last power amp was finished in the summer of 1998, and that required nothing more than bolting together the boards and chassis parts I'd made the previous summer! So, I'm very happy to be back in the game, and what a way to come back!
In any case, I don't feel the need to make any money here. I am lucky to have a very rewarding (both technically and financially) job at the moment, so I'm not exactly concerned with a few dollars. Nor would I feel right exploiting the generosity of the man who contributes so much to this community, including the IP behind this design. When the order broke 500, I emailed NP directly, just to make sure I wasn't overstepping any boundaries, and his response was short but positive... almost one of surprise that I had even asked. I think it's clear from his postings that he is not concerned with DIY efforts. In fact, I think it's obvious that we have his full support.
I haven't done an exact count of people who ordered, but the average order size is 4-5 boards, so that's around 150 packages to ship. There are some combined orders too... About 12 individuals combined their orders into a single shipment of 68 PCBs going to Taiwan. I have combined orders for other countries as well, particularly in cases where the shipping and payment methods are difficult or expensive.
It's a good thing I did the Beta order first, though. For that order, I tried to do exact accounting... I got burned by some unexpected PayPal fees when I had to upgrade my account to accept CC sourced payments, and by some expensive wire transfers. It was only $50, but it did teach me to round up a little to give a margin for error. With 750 boards being made, there's every potential for me to lose a good bit of money if there are unexpected costs. So, I got a firm quote on the price, added an estimated shipping cost, and the cost for mailing supplies. I rounded this total up a few cents per board, so there should be a bit of breathing room. As expected, there are quite a few people who make an error and send the wrong amount, so they're low by 50 cents or whatever. Also, there are a few people who decided to give me a tip. Overall, I think the payment errors will balance out in the end, and any surplus will probably be just enough to cover my losses from the Beta order, and maybe cover the cost of my 8 boards. Add some free boards for Grey and Dennis, and I think we're there. At least for January however, I'll actually still be out of pocket a few hundred until the spare boards are sold, but I expect they'll go like hotcakes. In fact, I'm starting to think I didn't order enough spares...
In the end, my real reward will be the satisfaction of knowing there's a little piece of me being enjoyed around the globe inside almost 800 of one of the world's finest amplifiers.
Physically draining? Maybe a little. Emotionally draining? Definitely not. Certainly, it has involved a lot of hard work, but this has motivated me to work quickly and break some bad hobby-habits. During my years at University, I simply did not have time or money to devote to DIY audio projects, and so the hobby morphed into one of learning and dreaming. I ended up reading a tremendous volume of audio-related technical literature, building a handful of small test circuits (little DAC boards and discrete opamps - cheap and quick), and a head full of ideas (accompanied by a large pile of napkin scribble schematics). On the plus side, I had seen and studied in depth almost every conceivable opinion and viewpoint in most areas of hi-fi music technology. On the down side, I had almost completely fallen out of the habit of actually building usable equipment (isn't that the whole point of this hobby?), and for better or for worse, these habits stuck... Witness my DSP design, which has been nearly complete for over a year and a half - I even have all the parts - yet it has not materialized in physical form. Compared to the feverish rate I used to build, I'd slowed to a snails pace. My last power amp was finished in the summer of 1998, and that required nothing more than bolting together the boards and chassis parts I'd made the previous summer! So, I'm very happy to be back in the game, and what a way to come back!
In any case, I don't feel the need to make any money here. I am lucky to have a very rewarding (both technically and financially) job at the moment, so I'm not exactly concerned with a few dollars. Nor would I feel right exploiting the generosity of the man who contributes so much to this community, including the IP behind this design. When the order broke 500, I emailed NP directly, just to make sure I wasn't overstepping any boundaries, and his response was short but positive... almost one of surprise that I had even asked. I think it's clear from his postings that he is not concerned with DIY efforts. In fact, I think it's obvious that we have his full support.
I haven't done an exact count of people who ordered, but the average order size is 4-5 boards, so that's around 150 packages to ship. There are some combined orders too... About 12 individuals combined their orders into a single shipment of 68 PCBs going to Taiwan. I have combined orders for other countries as well, particularly in cases where the shipping and payment methods are difficult or expensive.
It's a good thing I did the Beta order first, though. For that order, I tried to do exact accounting... I got burned by some unexpected PayPal fees when I had to upgrade my account to accept CC sourced payments, and by some expensive wire transfers. It was only $50, but it did teach me to round up a little to give a margin for error. With 750 boards being made, there's every potential for me to lose a good bit of money if there are unexpected costs. So, I got a firm quote on the price, added an estimated shipping cost, and the cost for mailing supplies. I rounded this total up a few cents per board, so there should be a bit of breathing room. As expected, there are quite a few people who make an error and send the wrong amount, so they're low by 50 cents or whatever. Also, there are a few people who decided to give me a tip. Overall, I think the payment errors will balance out in the end, and any surplus will probably be just enough to cover my losses from the Beta order, and maybe cover the cost of my 8 boards. Add some free boards for Grey and Dennis, and I think we're there. At least for January however, I'll actually still be out of pocket a few hundred until the spare boards are sold, but I expect they'll go like hotcakes. In fact, I'm starting to think I didn't order enough spares...
In the end, my real reward will be the satisfaction of knowing there's a little piece of me being enjoyed around the globe inside almost 800 of one of the world's finest amplifiers.
By the way... I won't be shipping all these boards alone. There are two people who live nearby who have volunteered to help out, so don't worry too much!
Also, I don't want to diminish Grataku's contribution to this design. He's responsible for the original layout, and has been closely involved with the revisions, including the very important design reviews. There's nothing like a second set of eyeballs to catch your mistakes!
While we're at it, let's not forget our Beta order participants, who paid the premium cost and took a small risk to get the first-run boards. Their feedback and help with price reduction of the prototype run has been invaluable.
Also, I don't want to diminish Grataku's contribution to this design. He's responsible for the original layout, and has been closely involved with the revisions, including the very important design reviews. There's nothing like a second set of eyeballs to catch your mistakes!
While we're at it, let's not forget our Beta order participants, who paid the premium cost and took a small risk to get the first-run boards. Their feedback and help with price reduction of the prototype run has been invaluable.
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