Sean

Went to Burlington Square to get Solen caps today. There were HUGE!! Only came in 400V. A great, great improvement !! I'm so much happier now with what I'm getting. The clarity is just amazing and it beats the audio coming out of the ipod anytime. My only problem with this is the hissing. There is still a very slight hissing when there is no audio playing. The hissing loudness remains the same at all levels. I've already added the 100 Ohm resistor as mentioned by william but still it does not go away. Don't know what else I can experiment with now. Any suggestions weill be greatly welcomed. My TLE2426 should be arriving soon and I will be testing the virtual ground circuit. Maybe it will help? Also replaced the cap on the power supply as advised by William

Thanks heady. Yeah it was quite difficult to find the polypropylene caps in SLT. I will check out Burlington Square..

Thanks heady for the confirmation No problems. Just want to be sure before I head to SLT again...

Just a quick question - you mentioned that 4.7uF is equivalent to 470nF. I'm thinking that uF is micro farad and nF is nano farad. If that is the case, there should be 3 decimal places between micro to nano. So isn't 4.7uF = 4700nF?

hey! thanks!! I was unable to find the polypropylene type in sls. Ask the uncle they look at me in a funny way Think I will change the caps first beause I want the true 'gwado' experience. If still got hiss, I will hoot the r5 haaahaa.. Thanks for your advice. Will post updates here soon. Need to go back to SLT..

I made sure the grounding is okay already. Before that the hissing was a lot worse and audio was very, very bad. After checking the grounding, much better but the hiss is still there. I read on head fi that it could be because of my headphones having low impedence. And to solve it, we can add this thing called 'R5'. Is that some kind of resistor? Where should I stick it? Other than the hissing, I'm quite happy with the audio quality. Even though the amplification is not very much higher. The sounds come out a lot more crisper and better defined. Can pick out some instruments a little better. Anyway, some photos.. Power Supply

Put it together already. Some observations: 1) Sound quality is better than if I plugged directly to iPod. But there seems to be a background hissing noise if I use the amp. Don't know if there is some way to reduce it. 2) Volume is not only slightly amplified. Is that supposed to happen? Anything I can do to improve it? How to I get line out from my ipod to the amp? Is there a cable I need to get?

This is the plan I have for Williamneo's 'GWADO' head amp. William, if you're free, care to have a look? Cheers, Sean.

Was trying to find the datasheets for the parts but the items purchased from SLS such as the 100k Ohm Pot or headphone socket do not have datasheets. Maybe when I get more serious I will buy a meter. Built the power supply last night and came up with a plan on how I'm going to wire up the main part. Will post it here later..

Wah! Thanks! This is so helpful. Google also cannot find haahaa.. Was about to ask you this as well! I'm now connecting the power supply. Since I don't have the TLE2426 yet I just whack the first one. Definitely will post once I'm done.

Thanks! I was just there. Only managed to find the JRC4556AD (not AL). Do you think this will be okay? As for the TLE 2426 virtual ground, I wasn't able to find it at all so I'm just going to use your other power supply schematic. Could not find any Dayton caps. Wanted to buy online but minimum order is USD50!! Postage was estimated at about USD30. So I'm just proceeding with what I found and hope for the best. Coming back to the virtual ground circuit, there was a 220uf Capacitor. What is the voltage for this cap? The 100k Dual Volume Pot I got has 6 legs!! Any pointers you can give on how I can connect it? In the diagram, it looks like they are all connected to the ground. Should I connect all 6 legs to the ground?

I'm interested in building this myself. Thanks William. So will the JRC 4560 replace the NJM? What will the disadvantage be? One more thing.. any shops to recommend in SLT that can sell high quality parts? Want to build a good one.