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Woodland Grange is one of those locations that’s equally convenient for everyone and great when you get there. Rather than being South-East orientated its accessible from London, Reading, Birmingham and further North/West. I bumped into visitors who wouldn’t normally be able to make it to a London or Windsor/Ascot Shows but were enjoying the Audio Show at Woodland Grange having made the trip from…
This blog post was sent in by a loyal customer, R.T. reviewing the Bottlehead Crack Headphone Amplifier kit and detailing some of his very own tweaks. In outline, US-based Bottlehead has been creating valve kits for some time and have a good following. This kit is their all new output transformerless valve headphone amplifier featuring the double triode 6080 valve. This kit suits high impedance…
This weeks blog comes from F.C. in regards to some recently purchased capacitors:   "I received today, among other parts, three Kaisei 4700uF/25v. Two for one of my gainclones and one for an old dac psu, feeded by batteries.    I must report that I am very happy with the sound. I allways used Silmic or Mundorf, where caps have an important influence in sound. These are very good caps, apart…
This weeks blog is an extremely detailed and well thought out review by one of our valued customers, Mr M.R. Is his own words:   "Powertron metal foil resistors “... are used throughout the industry ... and offer an incredibly stable resistance up to around 65 degrees ....”. Both statements by the Hifi Collective team caught my attention and some internet research confirmed that their stray…
  Todays blog was sent in by P.E. from sunny Cali in the U.S.A. Heres the latest edition of his system recently updated with parts from HiFi Collective.     "My first purchase was a few years back when I ordered inner stage and output coupling caps for my 845 based pair of amps. I recently ordered a set of caps for my passive crossover which delivers signal to the TAD compression horn…
  Hello hifiers!   This weeks blog comes from Keith Marshall, of Audio Wise. Shown in these photos:    The "Trio-P, a combined mm/mc phono pre-amp and passive controller, built with selector and attenuation switches, wiring and resistors of the very highest quality to ensure long life and an unsurpassed musical listening experience!"     To check these puppys out in more detail…
  This week we have a write up from A.C. about upgrading cables with cotton sleeving:   "I made a pair of silver foil speaker cables using your cotton sleeving, and the sound is astonishing! I expected an improvement in the treble and detail compared to the old copper foil cables but I was pleasantly surprised by the transformational change in sound.    The instrument placement seems much…
  Here we have another detailed write up from R.T. about the Elekit TU8600 kit. In his own words:   "Before I write a few words regarding my TU8600 build I must first say a massive thank you to Victor Kung @ vkmusic.ca. Victors passion, knowledge and commitment to making my purchase of this kit as straight forward and as pleasant an experience as he possibly could went way beyond anything I…
  Part 2 of Gábor Horváths upgrade story comes today with the tube line preamp he's worked on. In G.H.s own words:     "I found a nice tube line preamp designed by Giorgio Pozzoli. It uses 2 pcs E88CC (6922), 1 per channel. Volume potentiometer is situated at the output instead of the input. I like this because the signal to noise ratio is constant at any volume.   I made 4 pcs up till now…
The next few blog posts come from Hungary, sent in by Gábor Horváth. Watch this space as over the next few weeks we'll be showing a few more of G.H.'s projects, starting with his speaker upgrades. In his own words: "It is DF3-160 kit with D21, D54 and 30W54 speakers. I applied the original Heybrook HB3 stand to raise the loudspeaker to the proper position. I really like them. I put a Fostex…