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

Actually, you can't tell from a picture what kind of film capacitor it is. One can only be sure it is a film capacitor. Most probably it is a polyester film capacitor.

 

In SLT, the only polypropylene capacitors I could find were Rifa Evox which are blue in colour. The most well known polypropylene capacitors are Wima which are red in colour but I have never seen them in SLT. I have seen some in Koba which is in People's Park Centre. Koba has a great collection of stuff if you are new to DIY.

 

If you have money to spend, then audiophile tube shops will sell polypropylene caps like Solen etc. For example, Martins and another shop beside it, in Burlington Square which is next to SLS.

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

Here's a nice link for conversion:

http://www.electronic-supply.com/capconversion1.htm

 

And so 4.7uF = 4700nF.

Thanks heady for the confirmation

ops sorry.... wrong info... got to make a change.. thx heady you are right is 4700nf! dead meat i can't edit my previous post

No problems. Just want to be sure before I head to SLT again...

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Bro add it here! btw your capacitor use wrongly wor for the 4.7uf (aka 470nf) should be Polypropylene type. which has no + or - Sign on the cap de. as for ur power supply there the smaller cap also wrong wor. The power supply there also polypropylene type not Electrolytic type. The bigger cap is correct. If let say your headphone compatible issue then might need to try out different gain. as you can see the 120k ohm resistor right. u can try change it to 90k ohm resistor. so the break down is....

 

1st add the R5 (100 Ohm) to remove the Hiss.

 

after the that u see if you are happy with it a not.

 

IF NOT.... then

 

change the caps and try listen to it, if everything is fine then leave it at it is.

 

if not carry on with the changing of the gain level by swaping the 120k ohm to 90k ohm.

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?

[attachmentid=3965]

Bro add it here! btw your capacitor use wrongly wor for the 4.7uf (aka 470nf) should be Polypropylene type. which has no + or - Sign on the cap de. as for ur power supply there the smaller cap also wrong wor. The power supply there also polypropylene type not Electrolytic type. The bigger cap is correct. If let say your headphone compatible issue then might need to try out different gain. as you can see the 120k ohm resistor right. u can try change it to 90k ohm resistor. so the break down is....

 

1st add the R5 (100 Ohm) to remove the Hiss.

 

after the that u see if you are happy with it a not.

 

IF NOT.... then

 

change the caps and try listen to it, if everything is fine then leave it at it is.

 

if not carry on with the changing of the gain level by swaping the 120k ohm to 90k ohm.

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..

make sure ur gounding is connected properly, e.g pot ground, power gnd and source gnd is connected together. there is a kind of cable with both end is the same like ur headphone plug.

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.

while it is possible to find datasheet online and ask people in the forum, another solution for answering the questions about the potentiometer pin is to test it out yourself using an ohmmeter.

 

i know it's probably quite a hassle for a beginner to even considering buying a multimeter, then there's also that learning curve for using measuring equipment. but trust me, a multimeter is really a great help for diy.

 

and it makes diy-ing much more fun, not mentioning more scientific as then you are able to measure electrical parameters in your amp and see for yourself the improvement that different components or circuit topology brings to your amp or any other circuit in general.

 

oops sorry a bit out of topics.

 

anyway good luck with your diy. i hope it is successful and you have fun with it.

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..

For the virtual ground cap use between 25v to 35v will do.

 

for the dual pot they have 6 leg mean 2 leg are the ground, 2 leg are the in and 2 leg are th out.

 

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Good Luck!

Wah! Thanks! This is so helpful. Google also cannot find haahaa..

give you one more in case you need it

 

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After you have successful build it please show me some picture ok so i can post online to show off your amp! Thanks

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.

space electronic at basement on the right of battery shop, the uncle say they have JRC 4556 chip. Sean JRC and NJM are the same company.

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?

lol so i can choice my own name for that cloner? that will be cool ya lol.

alamakazam, SLT currently no stock, but I think they have JRC 4560 $2 each.

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.