I just wanted to mention that I recently dealt with Arjen Helder and Stacy and was very pleased with their handling of the transaction.
I wound up ordering a Topping ta-2020 with the mods and two of their most recent 2020 boards.
The pre-built amp sounds and works great. I'm using it in my office system which means it plays mp3s from my laptop soundcard (not a perfect source), but it's clearly a big improvement over the original Sonic Impact amp that I had before. It's a fuller sound, with all the detail intact. The Sonic Impact could be a bit edgy in its unmodified form and that's not an issue with the modifiedTopping.
I haven't connected in the 2020 boards yet, but I have worked with boards from a competitor. There's a substantial difference in build quality with Arjen's boards being clearly better constructed and much better thought out. For one, it was a pain with the other board to find connectors for the input pins and the Tripath chip was not heatsinked. Arjen includes connectors, board mounts, and two LEDs. They've also made some of the basic mods we talk about here and the parts quality in general is higher. For someone like me, it just makes life easier. Once I get them built up, I'll try to have some comment on sonic differences.
My communication with them was always very timely and accurate. They're apparently talking about building their own fully-assembled amp and I look forward to seeing it. I hope they do also develop an amp or boards for somewhat higher-power class D.
I wound up ordering a Topping ta-2020 with the mods and two of their most recent 2020 boards.
The pre-built amp sounds and works great. I'm using it in my office system which means it plays mp3s from my laptop soundcard (not a perfect source), but it's clearly a big improvement over the original Sonic Impact amp that I had before. It's a fuller sound, with all the detail intact. The Sonic Impact could be a bit edgy in its unmodified form and that's not an issue with the modifiedTopping.
I haven't connected in the 2020 boards yet, but I have worked with boards from a competitor. There's a substantial difference in build quality with Arjen's boards being clearly better constructed and much better thought out. For one, it was a pain with the other board to find connectors for the input pins and the Tripath chip was not heatsinked. Arjen includes connectors, board mounts, and two LEDs. They've also made some of the basic mods we talk about here and the parts quality in general is higher. For someone like me, it just makes life easier. Once I get them built up, I'll try to have some comment on sonic differences.
My communication with them was always very timely and accurate. They're apparently talking about building their own fully-assembled amp and I look forward to seeing it. I hope they do also develop an amp or boards for somewhat higher-power class D.
Arjen and his wife are both a pleasure to deal with. He can speak fluent english and is an engineer who knows his stuff (thus confidence in his products). I have bought quite a lot of stuff from there. Excellent communication throughout =)
I have his TK2050 and new valve buffer preamp. Excellent sound for the cost.
I have his TK2050 and new valve buffer preamp. Excellent sound for the cost.
Same experience here. Love the MKIII TA2020 and tube preamp. I teach high school and emailed them to ask for pc boards or discarded parts I could use in the classroom for my students to practice troubleshooting. They sent me 12 amps/preamps for the cost of shipping. My students were able to get four preamps and two of the amps working by scavaging parts from the boards! Not many companies would have done that. Maybe I should email Hifimediy and ask for the same deal. We could always use more boards to troubleshoot. You reading this Nick?
+1 Here.
I still had anyspare time to mount the board, but from a first analisys it's very well build.
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