FS: First Watt F5 (Pass DIY)

For sale is this DIY F5 First Watt / Pass beast of an amp. $750 net to me. This is a good price for friends, and is a ton of amp for the $$$.

This thing is manly. It isn't going to baby your ears; it isn't going to swaddle you in warm blankies. It's going to tell how it is, and it's going to be insistent about it. If you haven't heard tuneful, tight, and articulate bass, you will now. You may not have known you had been living with one noteish loose bass until you plug in this mofo and let it have it's way with your transducers. Treble will sparkle and shimmer and sound alive as well. Shitty recordings will be revealed as such. Good ones as well. This amp is no frills for people who know what they're doing. I've driven headphones and bookshelf speakers alike with it.

This isn't the F5T. It's the regular F5, 40W into 4Ohms, 25W into 8Ohms.

On the build: I'm not the builder. I bought this amp here on SBAF from @Greed who had bought it from the builder. This builder went super minimalist/purist and eliminated what he must have considered "deleterious" components from the schematic. Among them are the thermistors. As such, I've installed 5.5A fuses for getting past the power-on inrush surge. If you felt so inclined, you could install CL60s (a couple bucks at Mouser) and reduce the fuse rating down to spec. Also, the builder had installed two high wattage resistors on the driver boards flush with the PCB. I suspect they were overheating as they were a bit bloated. I yanked them and mounted new wirewound resistors proud of the PCB. They look good still. No issues that I see.

Here are the pics. Questions welcome. I'm going to tighten down the transformer bolts if this will be shipped. If they buzz after a few minutes of warmup, you can loosen them a tad. No buzzing right now.

 

This is amazing. Always wanted one for my modded HFMs.

Looking for trades of any kind?

 

Thanks for the offer but I'm downsizing my collection of amps. It's a great price so give it some thought. I also forgot to say the builder used some expensive boutique resistors in certain ocations and used Jensen caps at the last filter stage, and the dual trafos, etc. So BOM cost must have been up there.

 

Looks like dual-mono. Nice build and nice price

 

On hold for a few days for a manly rando who just donated to SBAF.

 

Sold to @weicheheck

Now don't let this amp put a dress on you, smack your ass, and call you "Sally".