Its been some time since I have bread boarded an amp but this prototype headphone amp from Oatley was just to pretty to hide. I happened to have a Pete Evans chopping board unused. So as not to mark the board all cct. brds. etc. are stuck down with either double sided tape or sticky standoff. Once dried these are hard to remove but not impossible.
To zippy boxes house the 240V power cord,switch and fuse while a front box holds the headphone connection, pot and RCAs. I did not assemble the brd. it came fully assembled. My job was just to bring it all together. The valves are 6J6 in two stages. Input goes direct into the phase splitter then into the push-pull power stage. Custom wound 35K/32ohm OPTs couple the headphones.
The PS is separate in an effort to isolate any hum. The power transformer is also custom wound and though gets very hot is within spec. The passive parts are quite ordinary which when this is released as kit, from Oatley Electronics, will keep the price down. Better parts can be substituted.
A ground plane runs through the two brds. which I have connected to mains earth along with the power tranni and OPTs. DC is provided for the filaments and two stage power filtering helps to make a quiet amp. High and low output taps help cater for different phones. The amp sounds good on two of my pairs of 32ohm headphones.
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