First listen

[sladef34]

After frying one of my LEDs, the Queen/Bottlehead was nice enough to send me a replacement.

Everything checked out so I fired it her up and plugged in my new (to me) cans.

It's after midnight and I'm still listening.  The sound is so engaging I can't stop.
Ottmar Liebert, Ray Charles, U2, Willie Nelson, and now some Yo Yo Ma.

I now know what people mean when they say "black background".  There have been a couple of occasions tonight
when small sounds were staged such that I turned my head to see if it was a live sound in my room.

This is my first piece of tube gear - I can't believe I have been missing out on this all these years.

And to think I built/wired this thing up myself.

I'm astounded by the sound I am hearing.  Thank you Bottlehead folks for a fun and fantastic sounding amp.

I'll follow up with pictures of the completed Crack tomorrow.  Too busy listening right now...   :-)

Slade

[Laudanum]

Welcome to the glowing side :-)

[ELBEBE1000]

Another victim.... lololo...

but happy as I am.

Welcome to the fantastic tube world.

Yashin

[Grainger49]

I like the glow, the warmth and the life like portrayal of spatial effects that tubes bring to the table. 

We haven't come up with a 12 step program yet but I'm pretty sure it will include tube rolling for a couple of months.  There is already such a thread for the Crack.  There will be lots of suggestions there.

[lior.amsalem]

remind me myself just a few weeks ago!
Welcome! pictures please!

LA

[BNAL]

Yes welcome.

You think that it is just fun and sounds good. You tell yourself that I'll listen to a little Crack. That's all, what’s the harm. I can stop anytime I want to.

That is what I thought. I said to myself what the hell, everyone on the Bottlehead forum seemed to be doing Paramours and Foreplays. I thought to myself that I could handle a little S.E.X. I could stop anytime I wanted too. That was back in 2004.

I'm here to tell you that is not true. The addiction starts slow a modification here and modification there. Before you know it you need more S.E.X. is not enough and that is when you start down the patch of using the heavy stuff. The S.E.X. was not that hard, I can handle the Paramount. I can stop anytime I want I'm not addicted. You start looking at the emty work table and you start to shake, your hands sweat. The next thing you realize is your building a Foreplay III, but wait it is not a base Foreplay, your building the Extended version right off the bat.

For me it should have stopped there, but I did something unthinkable. I got my son hooked on a Foreplay III. What have I done?

You can't withdraw cold turkey. You need to do it slowly. I had to start my withdraw slowly, so I decide that Crack would do the trick. It is smaller than the other Bottlehead products, it has a simple circuit. How could it be addicting? I'd just start with the base kit. No Speedball for me. Boy was I wrong. What was going on? Here I am more intoxicated with this simple little amp than I can remember.  I’m starting down that dark path again. I have already tried different 12AU7 tubes, added a bypass cap to the power supply, and choke. On my bench I’m breaking in Teflon caps and the speedball is waiting in the wings to be built and installed.

I guess there is no hope for me.

[sladef34]

Here is a picture of my completed Crack amplifier.
Ebony stain, gloss finish, mirror polished top plate.

I have since added spiked feet at each corner.

First addition is going to be a right angle connector to get some strain relief on my headphone cable.

[BNAL]

It look great.

[Laudanum]

I made a relatively short cable (maybe 4 feet) with a Right angle TRS plug on one end and a TRS inline jack on the other.   I use this rather than a right angle jack or adapter right at the amp mainly because I have one headphone that has a right angle plug already and 2 of my others have coiled cables.  So the cable gives me some more slack for the coiled cords and keeps the coils away from the amp and table edges so they dont snag,  and also takes the strain off of the phones with straight plugs.  But it's a good, general alternative.   I used a Neutrik right angle plug and a Switchcraft inline jack and Canare twisted pair (L-2T2S) cable.  Nothing fancy but good quality plugs and cable, and you can always use "boutique" connectors and cable if desired.  I cant hear a difference with phones directly plugged in or through the cable.  A Quad cable could be used instead with a couple different wiring configurations.  But since I cant hear a difference with the cable I built, I havent bothered experimenting.
Anyway, just thought I would throw it out there as an option.