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View Full Version : Finished building my Millett Hybrid headphone amp



BradJudy
02-26-2006, 05:59 PM
I finally sat down and built my Millett Hybrid headphone amp this week/weekend. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:

Pre-casing:

http://www.bradjudy.com/head-fi/MH1.jpg

All wrapped up:

http://www.bradjudy.com/head-fi/MH6.jpg

BTW: The orange glow isn't just the tubes, I have orange power indicator LEDs under the tube sockets to increase the effect.

curtis
02-26-2006, 06:52 PM
Wow Brad!!

That looks very nice! How many hours did it take you to build?

BradJudy
02-26-2006, 07:46 PM
Thanks Curtis. I don't really know how many total hours it took. It's a pretty easy build and I'm using an off-the-shelf power supply, so I didn't have to build it.

curtis
02-26-2006, 08:35 PM
I see some solder....so I figure some of that was involved.

Just did a quick google and see that you can buy the board, but is there somewhere you can buy the entire kit? I also see that a fully built amp sells for $650!

BradJudy
02-26-2006, 08:58 PM
This is the place for info on the MH: http://www.diyforums.org/

If you stick to standard parts, it's about $70-80 for the board and components. Then there's the cost of the case and jacks, probably another $30+. Power supply can be anything from $12 (cheap wall wart) to $80 (fully populated STEPS power supply). In the end, at least $150 in parts total, much higher if you go with fancy stuff in fancy cases.

There aren't any full kits available that I know of, but that website has a bill of materials that includes part numbers from both digikey and mouser. If you're interested in building one, I can help you with picking or ordering parts.

bikeman
02-27-2006, 03:36 AM
You just gave my Audio Alchemy and I an inferiority complex. Thanks, Brad. :D
Nice work.

David

Dave G
02-27-2006, 06:03 AM
That's a beautiful piece of work! I especially like the way the tubes poke their heads above the top of the case. I can see why you're happy with it.

How's the sound?

Dave

sensibull
02-27-2006, 07:01 AM
Very groovy! But with my housekeeping habits, I'd worry about a dust bunny invasion...

curtis
02-27-2006, 08:19 AM
Brad,
I am so tempted to try something like this, but I don't use headphones like you do.

For me, I think a two-channel speaker amp would be more worthwhile. Something I could use in my bedroom.

But your amp really looks cool!

sensibull
02-27-2006, 08:34 AM
For me, I think a two-channel speaker amp would be more worthwhile. Something I could use in my bedroom.

Rather than building an amp from scratch (which, speaking for myself, is a little intimidating), you could try modding a T-amp (http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=300-952). Lots on instruction/ideas can be found here (http://www.michael.mardis.com/sonic/start.html), and some testimonials here (http://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/t-amp_opinions_e.html) (scroll down). Inexpensive, and should be plenty of power for a bedroom setup. FWIW...

BradJudy
02-27-2006, 09:02 AM
Ironically, I don't use my headphones all that much. Heaphone amps are a cheaper way to deal with the DIY urge and this looked like a fun item for my first tube piece of audio equipment. Now that I have two nice, but very different, pairs of headphones (I guess three if you count my traveling phones) and a pair of different amps (okay, I have a third, but I should just sell it sometime), I don't expect that I'll be doing anything new in the area for a while.

I did pick up a couple of boards to add power-on output delay to my two amps (as they stand, it's best to leave headphones unplugged for a few seconds after power up) and next time I feel the need to get out the soldering iron, I'll assemble them and put one into this amp and one into my PPA.

Anyone interested in headphone DIY stuff should check out this site: http://tangentsoft.net/audio/

It has some good projects with excellent instructions and parts guidance. The CMOY is the first project for lots of folks (including myself) and the PIMETA is also a good beginner project (I built its predecessor, the META42).