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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

PayPal Account Hacked

### Account is back to normal - 4/18/2015 ###

Our PayPal account is hacked.

We shall change our account and resend all invoices for all customers. Do not worry. This only involved people stealing our PayPal money on purchasing stuff we didn't authorized. To paying customers - no impact.

Please be informed.

Thank you!

Product Lists  

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Level 3: depends on type, size and complexity. Email us for details.
Iso-trans: link 1, link 2
* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.  
* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!  
* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.

Friday, March 13, 2015

NOS Tubes

Do you love NOS tubes? We do! 

I (Ken) myself is a very, very small time collector. From time to time, I do look for bargains on the net and from friends to increase my collection with unique exotic tubes. NOS tubes are like antiques. Prices only go in 1 way - up! It can be considered as an financial investment as well if one does not plan to use it.

Well, today's topic is not about financial investment or NOS tubes collection. It is about, USING EXOTIC NOS TUBES in your amplifier. We are not talking about those common NOS tubes that have been used by big time manufacturers, where the price is sky high and the good quality ones are already in the hands of collectors. Those that people can find in the market now are the 2nd or 3rd rate NOS tubes. Once in a while, something that is of the higher grades do appear and is being snapped up by rich and/or smart audiophiles. 

We have seen NOS preamp and driver tubes that fetch over U$1,000 a piece, or more. How insane is that?

So, why are we still hoo-haa-ing over NOS tubes? It is because, there are still PLENTY of exotic NOS tubes around that users can use! They are still at dirt cheap price. Those super old and super high quality ones still can be found in eBay or in dealers' stashes, at very reasonable prices. 

Why are they still being so inexpensive? Are they inferior in quality? Not at all! In fact, some of them are better in quality and produce much better sound. A few of the reasons are as follow:

* They are not being used by big time manufacturers and therefore lesser demand.
* No as many hoggers, "investors", and collectors are going after these tubes. 
* Not many users are capable of using them due to their non-mainstream electrical and mechanical properties.

We often scout the market for such gems and we will use them in our customized amplifiers, with excellent results and very economical price. We got the technical know how and the foresight to detect such unpolished diamonds in the "rubbish" pile. Once properly designed and implemented, these exotic NOS tubes are miles and kilometers ahead of the "leftover" tubes or even the new production tubes, not taking into consideration the unique outlook and collectible values. If you follow our blog, you would have probably discovered some of them.

Some may ask, what are those exotic NOS tubes you are referring to? Well, today is your lucky day. We are going to show you some. For those lucky ones, you can immediately buy and implement it in your designs. For those without the technical knowledge, it's our time to make some money out of you to install one of these exotic babies in your setup. The collectible value and uniqueness in look and sound are priceless!

Below are some pictures taken out of the internet to show our readers some exotic NOS tubes they can use. If it infringes your copyright, please kindly let us know and we shall remove them immediately. Some of the tubes are still cheap but some of the tubes have already reach quite unreasonable price due to the uniqueness. We still show you for completeness sake. And, you can still request them to be used for your design if you are willing to pay the premium for these tubes.

Contact us, and we can explore these options together. The NOS tubes world is much bigger than this. It's good to use those uncommon NOS tubes to save the Earth's scarce resources. It is good for your wallet! It sounds great! It looks even better! It has substantially more value than the generic reissue tubes! 

Have you ever imagined using very, very old and exotic NOS Cossor, MOV, GEC, Telefunken, Mullard, Osram and similar tubes? A lot of us are taken back due to the stratospheric prices. A GEC U52 or U53 is almost U$500 now depending on the condition and the type. Do you know how much is a match pair of Telefunken ECC803S with <> bottom? It is U$2250. 

I would rather spend this money on good irons and use the leftover funds to invest in the non-mainstream exotic NOS tubes. That is what we call "good investments". 

Imagine your friends' faces when they visit you to have a listen. They will be drooling over the Telefunken, Cossor, MOV, and GEC tubes based preamp and power amplifiers that they can only dream of using mainstream gears. The mainstream NOS tubes could have been more expensive than their gears now.


Telefunken AZ1 Mesh Plate Rectifier

CK1006 Gas Rectifier

Purple glow of CK1006

Cossor 6J5G

Smoked glass Cossor 6J5G

Cossor AT20

Cossor 220


GEC U31 rectifier

RGN2004 Mesh Plate

RGN1064 Mesh Plate

Marconi MU14

Marconi U14

Nice Marconi label

Philips 1823 Mesh Plate

Telefunken RGN1064

Telefunken RGN1064 Rectifier

Telefunken RGN2004

RGN2004

RGN2004 Mesh Plate - lighted

J&K Audio Design

3/13/2015



Product Lists  

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Level 3: depends on type, size and complexity. Email us for details.
Iso-trans: link 1, link 2
* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.  
* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!  
* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.





Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Simple Tube Tester

Simple tube tester - what is this for?

This has happened to us all the time -
  • Purchasing tubes from eBay or sellers and worrying that the tubes might be dead on arrival and you have not actually bought the tube amplifier yet.
  • Worrying that tubes is not functioning and will damage your expensive tube amplifiers.
  • And many more reasons to ensure the tubes are functioning (you can think of more for sure)
The best way, of course, is to have a proper tube tester. Not all audiophiles are technically trained and operating a tube tester might be too much for them. Or, the price of tube testers are out of reach, or shipping of tube testers to them is too expensive. Or, the tube tester cannot test the tubes they wanted.

What's the solution to this? Build a simple tube tester for simple functional test! If you do not how to build one, let us do it for you for a small fees. Simple tube tester can have such functions:

  • Dead or alive test.
  • Simple matching.
  • Filament short test.
  • Simple functional test.
  • Test multiple tubes or single tube.
  • And other customized functions...
Contact us for more details!

J&K Audio Design
3/10/2015

Product Lists  

Level 0

Level 3: depends on type, size and complexity. Email us for details.
Iso-trans: link 1, link 2
* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.  
* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!  
* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.



Friday, March 6, 2015

How To Increase Amplifier Output Power

What is the secret to increase your class A tube amplifier output power? Or how to double the amplifier output power by double? Go for class A2? Go for parallel single ended? No! We are going to teach you a simpler way of doing so, perceptually. In measurement wise, it should also show some improvement but we have not done so and dare not claim so.

We receive a lot of good feedback from our product users and this week, we received one that really stands out from the rest that we feel that we must share with our readers.

He is a busy man and has ordered our stuff for quite some time. He just tried our products over the Chinese New Year (2015) due to the long holiday break and he is impressed with the performance and improvement that he gets with our products. We try not to spell out what that is for the moment to create some suspense. Smart readers, and those that are in constant contact with us will know what that really is.

Take a look at the original snippet that we cut, remove the "secret ingredient", and pasted below. No other edits had been done to this original email of our customer! Honestly. No gimmick!
 


"The amount of power that I get from my 300B seems to be double!"

Now this is really something! He is not comparing to some junk either but another high quality product. 

Now that's our secret on "How To Increase Amplifier Output Power", or should we say "How To Double Your Amplifier Output Power!"? 

We've requested the user to provide a write-up and some pictures of his setup / project for posting at this blog to share with the rest of our followers. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, you are welcome to take a wild guest on what that is. 

Post it at the comments section and we shall see who is correct when the final feedback post is posted! If you can't wait and want it now, email us or contact us using the forms on our blog.
  • For our followers that already knew, please kindly keep quiet. (^_^)b
  • For those that use our products and feel that "my d*ck (audio gadget) is bigger and better than others", congratulations!
  • For those that are still wondering why their projects sound inferior to others, pay attention.
  • For those that are still thinking hard on why theirs did not sound as good as what the website, look here.
  • For those that still wanting  to improve their sound system, this is what you must get.
  • For those that still in disbelieve mode, good luck in your projects!
J&K Audio Design
3/7/2015

Product Lists  

Level 0

Level 3: depends on type, size and complexity. Email us for details.
Iso-trans: link 1, link 2
* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.  
* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!  
* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.




Thursday, March 5, 2015

Custom Made Amplifiers

This week, a very unique individual was asking us to custom made amplifiers.

I think it must be from a very polite gentleman. He was asking various clarification questions on what we can do and what we use for our custom made amplifiers. He was sort of like trying to convince himself that our transformers are what he is looking for to be used for his custom made amplifiers.

Yet, I can feel that he is still rather uncomfortable to try something from a developing country and tried to get us to describe the sound when compared to those established brands like T@ngo, T@mura, Lund@hl, and such.

After several mails to and fro, still undecided, he finally popped the question - can you guys custom make amplifiers using other people's products? Apparently, he likes the sound of T@ngo output transformers and he'd like to use that on his custom make amplifier. The rest of the components like choke, power, chassis and design come from J&K Audio Design.

Then we realize why he could not make up his mind. Finally the cat is out of the bag. He wants to use T@ngo output transformer! We told him, no problem at all! In fact, we do welcome such requests since we do have building charges for custom make amplifiers. We still earn either way, just lesser. No big deal.

In addition, using other people's products does not mean that we admit defeat that someone else are better than ours! After dealing so much with audio transformers, we realize that up to a certain extent, frequency response chart, phase difference, distortion, measurement figures and such will tell us just so much about that pair of output transformers. There is this aspect of tonality of the output transformers that cannot be judged just by figures or charts alone. That's the "house" sound of different designers and manufacturers.

So, readers, don't be shy, just tell us what you need or what you want to use. We will gladly comply if it is doable or does no harm. We have done that in the past. We do not mind doing that now and in the future, until or unless something changes that we cannot predict now.

Outside Food IS Allowed. :)

J&K Audio Design
3/6/2015

Product Lists  

Level 0

Level 3: depends on type, size and complexity. Email us for details.
Iso-trans: link 1, link 2
* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.  
* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!  
* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Power supply capacitance myth

Hi guys,

Today, a customer asks us if we can increase the value of the class A tube rectified power supply capacitors for his custom made amplifier significantly so that he can get a better power supply with low ripple and deep excellent bass?

In his ordered design, we only chose values from 4UF to 100UF maximum for his 300B amplifier. He was questioning us why it is so low. He saw at least 220UF to 470UF in other designs, sometimes even 1000UF on some designs. If we use 100UF, will the bass be weaker compared to those with more capacitance?

What do you think? Do you use big capacitors and it equals to a great power supply?

We are sorry to tell you that it is a WRONG assumption. Huge capacitance does not equal to good power supply. Huge capacitance makes the bass weaker and looser due to the slow recovery time to charge the capacitors once the charge is used up.

What is important in class A tube amplifier power supply is to have a critically damped supply with excellent transient response with just sufficient capacitance to low the power supply ripple to an inaudible level.

Less is actually more! That's what we do with our power supplies. That's one of the things that separates us from others. You will find that our bass are taut, deep and fast! No woolieness!

J&K Audio Design
25/2/2015


Product Lists  

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Level 3: depends on type, size and complexity. Email us for details.
Iso-trans: link 1, link 2
* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.  
* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!  
* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.



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* Finished amplifiers, DACs, audio gadgets, upgrades and repairs - this is not our core business and we do it out of passion. We do not have fixed models, fixed price and we customize for each individuals. The sky is limit of creativity.

* Our product lines are always improving and increasing. If you do not see what you want, contact us!

* Please email for volume discounts, distributor and OEM pricing.