Bottlehead Crack W Speedball Pen
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Bottlehead Crack OTL Tube Amplifier for headphones with Speedball upgrade and tweaks to let certain tubes work. Comes with 4 tubes.
Completely purchased DIY and built/painted on my own. Sounds great, no background hiss whatsoever because of speedball upgrade. Comes with Sylvania 7236 tube and E80CC tube. (amp's A, B resistors were modified slightly to let these tubes to work. RCA 6080 and 12AU7 tubes came by default and are not as clear/wide/bassy. If you'd like to try those you need to modify the amp's resistors back to stock. Very easy to do, only two resistors need changing.
PM me for easy details. Currently the amp will work perfectly with a Sylvania and E80CC combo and it sounds the best I've ever heard from my tube rolling journey.) Those tubes are rare and expensive too!
Bottlehead Crack W/speedball
Great value for its price. Competes with the high end tube amps available from Woo Audio and what not. Great for Sennheiser HD600, HD650, HD800 and other high impedance headphones like Beyerdynamics. Is a USA model (110 V) so I will ship to the USA only, unless you really have use for it outside the USA (message me if so). Bought in USA, but I moved to Greece a few months ago and am ready to part my ways with it.
Beautiful amp. Used for a few months regularly in 2015. Not at all in 2016. Spent a lot of time and money on it and since you cannot buy it pre-built, it's an easier choice for most to buy it over the DIY kit that Bottlehead sells new.FREE Shipping paid by me to the U.S.
I will talk to my local FedEx facility after the sale to get quotes and ship to the buyer's location (economy). It seems shipping/handling might be delayed up to a week because August in Greece is a holiday month and most businesses are very slow/closed all together.
Writing a review after isn’t easy, so don’t shoot me if this review turns out short 😉 The Bottlehead Crack amplifiers arrived a little over two months after having ordered them on Bottlehead’s website. We ordered a couple of Cracks right before the price increase was announced (more on that later) so that probably explains the long waiting period. As Mike mentioned before in his Facebook notes, it wasn’t always easy communicating with Bottlehead, with emails getting lost/unanswered but a couple of phone calls and lots of emails later we got our DIY packages in the mail.
Bottlehead did forget to send us the logo badges we paid for and the wood of one of the casings was slightly damaged but we were to excited to complain about that and we decided to build them like that. The DIY Crack is a fairly easy to build amplifier, anyone having experience with soldering and a multimeter can surely build one himself. Bottlehead also includes a very detailed step-by-step manual making it almost impossible to screw up. If you don’t feel like building the amplifier yourself, you can always order a pre-assembled Crack from Bottlehead, at an extra cost of course. Anyway since Mike did the build on both our Cracks, I will let him talk more about the building process later.
Like with every Bottlehead design all in- and outputs are located on top of the amplifier (even the power cable goes in on top). That can be unhandy when you don’t have a lot of space or when your interconnects and power cable are rather unflexible. It doesn’t really bother me but I’ve seen a lot of people using L shaped plugs with the Bottlehead designs and other DIY’ers have changed the layout and put the connectors on the back and front. It’s a DIY project so if you have the skills you can do pretty much whatever you want. Some people like the look of the Crack and others hate it. While I think its looks are basic and very cool, I have to admit that having all the cables on top will probably never make it win a beauty contest. Looks do matter when buying an amplifier but in the end the sound it produces is more important, and that’s where the Crack really shines.
I’ve only been using my beloved Sennheiser HD650 with the Bottlehead amp. I specifically bought the Crack for this headphone after seeing raving posts about this combination over and over. Most of my other headphones have low impedance or are orthodynamic headphones and the Crack wasn’t developed with those in mind. I did try it briefly with the Hifiman HE-400 and while that worked, I didn’t really experience any distortion like Mike, it doesn’t really need the Crack and it also doesn’t do anything special to it. (only normal with the HE-400 not really needing any amping). I was very happy to notice the Crack was dead quiet with the stock tubes and with my replacement tubes (it doesn’t hum at all). The volume button, being a bit bulky, is smooth to turn and I never needed to turn it further as 10 o’ clock to get to my preferred listening level, so there is more than enough power left for you to play with.
Bottlehead Crack Otl
Even without any music playing, turning the volume pot was completely noiseless. I rather quickly replaced the stock Electro Harmonix input tube with one of my RCA clear top tubes. The stock configuration is good but the RCA tube just gives the amplifier a bit more body and weightier bass. Overall the Crack is a very clean sounding amplifier picking up every detail the music has. Bass is deep, well defined and punchy, the mids are very natural and smooth and the treble is nice and sparkling.
It is quite a different sound signature as my other OTL amplifier, the Lafigaro 339 (review coming later). This last one is overall warmer sounding, has even smoother mids, more rumble in the bass (but looser) and has less pronounced treble as the Crack. Both sound great and if I would describe the 339 as “lush”, the Crack would be “clean”. In other words I could say the Crack is more transparent and colors the music less making it very enjoyable but also very non-fatiguing to listen to. I found myself listening for 6 straight hours to the Senn & Crack combo during work without even taking one break, that’s how hard it is to get off Crack (I just had to make one lame drug joke).
Of course it’s easy to modify the sound somehow using different tubes. I tried the very popular Tung-Sol 6AS7G and the rare GEC 6AS7G brown base in combination with the RCA 12AU7 I rolled in earlier but after several listening session I kept going back to the stock Westinghouse branded 6080 Tung-Sol. Only needing one power tube and one input tube, tube rolling is one of the most fun things to do with the Crack, and you can easily tune the sound to your liking. This basic version of the Crack doesn’t have the speedball upgrade and was available for $219 as a DIY kit.
Getting this kind of sound for such a low price is simply amazing and an absolute bargain. Nowadays the Crack is available for $279 (+27%) but it still is an extremely good deal if you can build it yourself. Bottlehead also offers a pre-built version of the Crack for a supplementary $150, making it $429 without shipping. Unfortunately for those not having the time or knowledge to build it themselves, the Crack is getting close to the prices of amps like the WooAudio WA3($495) and the LaFigaro 339($550) which have a more professional look and an equal or better sound quality.
Something to think about. In conclusion: if you are DIY’er looking for an OTL amp to power your high impedance headphones and prefer sound quality over looks (or just like the looks of the Crack like me), don’t look any further. The under $300 Crack is all you need and it will get you addicted for life. Next Page: Mike’s Impressions. I had said before that I found the K550 to be just a tad analytical sounding. After spending more time with it, I don’t think that is the case anymore. It might be burn in, but more then likely, I am just getting used to the sound.
Speedball Pen Holder
I had planned on getting a MS2+ to go with it, but I am starting to think that the dacport LX would match the sound of the K550 better (I would love to hear your thoughts on that, yes, this post does relate to the crack, i just believe in a good origin story). I was going to pair them with the asgard, but it is hard not to notice the way you rave about the crack.
You had mentioned somewhere, that there was some noise when the K550 and the crack were paired but it was very minor. That is a bit of a concern to me because on some of my classical (MN orchestra’s Beethoven’s 7th per instance), the dynamic range is INSANE, and is frequently almost whisper quiet.
If there is any noise, it will be heard. Do you have any thoughts? Would the crack still work, or would I be better with the asgard (or something)? Man, all these awesome reviews coming in, it is paradise in headfonia. Chris, Checking for shorts, the easiest way is to inspect visually. If you see metal or solder tin touching, or very close, you can take a multimeter, switch to continuity tester and test if the two points are indeed shorted. Switching polarity of the diodes and caps, this is why after doing a few solder points, I always go back and double check things.
On the diodes and caps, I think I re-checked their polarity orientation a million times. 😉 The best way to do the assembly is to do it very slowly. Fast assembly in my experience is very prone to errors, and troubleshooting would take much longer than the time you save. I find their stuff to be good, but overpriced. You can get something equivalent that doesn’t need to be built, isn’t just a plate that sits on an open box, doesn’t take 2 months to arrive, and quite frankly is better looking for around the same price or less. You aren’t getting a nice headphone jack nor potentiometer and knob. The tube sockets aren’t that great.
Slotted hardware is just blah. The placement of the power switch makes me reach past the tubes, hence I burn my arms on the tubes. The transformer bell end cover isn’t coated with anything and gets hot, so it rusts. The only thing that prevents a person from making this kit themselves is that the power transformer is custom-wound by some manufacturer. I still doubt that with the numbers they’re getting that they cost a lot. Their Speedball is really way over-priced. $125 for a few PCBs, a few transistors, a few resistors, a few LEDs, some heat sinks and mounting kits, and standoffs and screws I could build and sell the same thing with a better PCB design for $50 and still make plenty of profitand not have it take 2 months to arrive.
If a friend asked me if they should buy one, I would tell them no, and I would just offer to make them one for much less than they could buy it, including the labor. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out the power transformer issue.