ECP Torpedo III [indexed in first post]

From my perspective, Tom's characterization is not accurate. Not trying to start a dispute just add some clarification on my behalf, since there was somewhat of a personal attack lodged in there. After building my torpedo 3 it sounded amazing but had a slight buzz, only audible with iems, when the volume pot was at full and the rca cables weren't plugged in. Maybe there was a slight hum while rca were plugged in. Again only audible with iems and at full volume. A few sbafers heard it at that time and said it sounded great and that the buzz I was talking about wasn't even audible. I go way too far with noise sometimes.

Since it was my first diy, and I wanted to make sure everything was done correctly, I sought help from Tom who recommended I add more solder to he top of the pcb since it looked dry. He also recommend I check the dc voltage across the headphone jack terminals/ground. DC was nill and I added some solder to the top of the pcb. It did not make a difference so I sent the amp in to Tom for diagnosis and repair. I had put too much solder on top of my pcb, and admittedly my soldering is not good, see images below. He did say that my soldering on the transformers, large transistors, jacks and pot looked fine.

Tom contacted me a few days later with a bill of 250 dollars, without listening to my amp as it was when I sent it in. He said it was unsafe I think the main reason was that some of the caps were slightly loose, not going to dispute that as Tom is much more knowledgeable than I am. He replaced all resistors, diodes and transistors. He basically rebuilt the amp. He said my amp performed flawlessly and sounded fantastic, even better than his own and he thought I would be super happy. He even changed the caps on his amp to match mine. At the time Tom was busy and when I asked him to also add the ccs boards he gave me the quoted response, that he wasn't sure it was worth it, that there were pros and cons and that he was super busy and it would be a while before he could get to it. He also pointed out that my soldering skills were not good enough to populate the boards, so I shouldn't try it on my own. I am happy to post pics of my soldering from before. Anyway everything was smooth up to this point, I was a bit shocked at the 250 price for repairs but I knew that Tom had done a TON of work for me, so I did not complain. At that point, there was no bad blood between us, although Tom was frustrated at the amount of work he ended up doing. Removing solder is a long and painful job.

The frustration on my end started when I received the amp and it performed exactly the same as when I had sent it in, although it did look a lot prettier. It still had a slight buzz when rca cables were not plugged in and volume pot is at full(with iems). I was pretty upset that Tomb didn't test/diagnosis this issue before or after repairing the amp, since that was the reason I sent the amp in. I know now that this is normal with sensitive enough iems when the rca arent plugged in, and when the rca's are plugged in the amp performs as expected. Pretty sure every torpedo 3 does this, but could be wrong. Don't try it though, as it does put a lot of strain on the amp.

We did get into some arguments afterwards that I regret. I get from Tomb's perspective he went through his procedure and did a huge amount of work on my part, but I still felt like he had done a lot of work to my amp without consulting me and that I spent a lot of money with no improvement. Although I did not request one, Tom was upset enough about my complaints that he issued a refund.

Everyone has bad days and I was pretty harsh on Tom for doing so much work without checking with me first. I did not appreciate the effort he went through to make me happy. At the time thought it would be something simple like the volume pot or bad rca inputs. Tom has done a lot of excellent work on the torpedo 3 project including packing every single component with care and always being there to help. I hope we can look past this, and I for one have no hard feelings. I really hope that this ends here, but I did feel the need to clarify past events and I have tried to present things as objectively as possible.

Tomb, it might be too late but I apologize for the trouble and frustration I caused you.

I do disagree with the assessment about the mundorf's being a huge improvement, as I personally do not like the way they sound and don't think there is a big performance increase. I think the amp was most magical in its original state in terms of tonality, bass and overall synergy with the modded hd650s. But ymmv.

PICS OF MY SOLDERING, AMP BEFORE REBUILD BY TOM

 

Perhaps kits should be sold "as is", along with debug and verification procedural instructions to ensure customers that their amp is performing to spec? I'm not sure how to make both sides 100% happy, nor whether that's even a reasonable goal. But it'd be a shame if DIY kits were discontinued in the future.

 

Thanks for the clarification on the tube CCS. I believe that was part of my confusion. For the caps, I had intended to say that I needed to go back and understand the differences based on comments more specifically for each one, not that the information wasn't in the thread for that issue.

 

BTW, fellas.. I will *definitely* be cleaning up the first post. It's a bit scattershot as I did it on the fly and it's long overdue for an overhaul to make the index more useful. @zonto's done a terrific job with his SBAF compendiums, so I anticipate following the same format. My apologies for the delay, just started a new job and life shit even before that left me with little spare time.

 

Sounds like a good idea! Maybe this would have helped me, too. I am bit hesitating to write this but I sort of messed up my build. As reported a few weeks back I managed to restore the left channel but it was playing quieter and with reduced treble. Tom checked the photos I sent him and pointed out that I made a silly (!!!) mistake (forgot to isolate the Mundorf contacts from the Cinemags), which might explain one or two strange noises I heard during the first minutes of operation. For a couple of days I tried to reflow everything but w/o success. Wondered whether I should sent it back to Tom and ask for a repair, but in the end I went the self-punishment route and ordered a T3 built by Tom.

The good news for me - I have a working T3 which sounds wonderful! Listened to the Smashing Pumpkins last night and the muddiness I remember from my previous amps was completely gone. I didn't know that the HD800 is capable of such powerful drums & bass. At no point in time Elise nor MicroZOTL came close to this.

The bad news for me - I have this "finished" T3 lying around.

 

Not seeing these on the beezar website. You guys know if they are still being offered.

 

Tom ran out of some parts. I sent him a few t replenish his stock.

 

Thanks to Doug, there are now two remaining assembled T3's up for sale on beezar.com. Both should be ready to go at the end of the weekend. There will be no more.

I removed all the options except for the power cord and LED. All of the upgrades will be included.

 

I know that the following is a significant change of the unique look of the Torpedo but I with a few socket savers I got this:


The potential benefits: less heat in the casing, no need to open the top to change tubes and hopefully less stress on the tube sockets because the socket savers rest against the top while wiggling the tubes in and out.

 

So you stacked socket savers like Legos ?

 

Just two Let's see if the amp runs cooler.

 

Try to listen to the amp carefully when trying this. I don't mean to be discouraging, but I tried socket savers on the Torpedo I and it basically doubled the noise measurements with RMAA. I gave up on them (pin converters, too) pretty quickly.

Could be I got a bad set, though, because 7-pin (the tubes used on the T1) socket savers are very rare.

 

Sure, I know that these guys can pick up noise. I got the ones with metal enclosure and hope that they will have no negative impact. Will listen carefully throughout the next days.

 

What is the reason for the taller tube height of the three Torpedo amps in the middle (compared to the two on the ends)?

 

Probably longer bottles. There are tall bottle 12A*7 variants out there, e.g. the 7062.

 

Maybe they just came in from the cold?

 

Of course, shrinkage.

 

You caught me. I cheated with the photo. Those are all actually the Torpedo I. There is no difference in external appearance, except if you study very closely, those tubes are all smaller diameter - as in, 7-pin.

The taller ones are E90CC tubes,which happen to be magical versions of the 6J6, the basis of the amplifier design.

EDIT: I meant to add that Bazelio is also exactly correct. The 6414, 6829, and 7062 all work in the T3 and they are long tubes (for some of the 7062), the same as the E90CC in 7-pin. So practically speaking, the photo is valid for either amp.

 

Take a first dip in tube rolling, have been listen to stock for a few month to familarize myself with the T3 signature before going in.

 

Interesting, JAN GE black plates. Let us know how they sound. My JAN GE were gray plates, which i did not think were better than the Triple Mica Smooth black plates.