Bottlehead Crack Headphone amps going on sale

ALL212

Starting this Saturday, May 5th, thru Friday, May 11th the Crack headphone amp kit for high impedance headphones will be on sale for $199 ($100 off the regular price) and the Speedball upgrade kit will be on sale for $100 ($25 off the regular price).

mrbiron

Did you buy another....?

msg

Curious about these kits. Can anyone classify the sound and maybe list some other prior gear for comparison and how the Crack/Speedball compares?

I'm thinking about building one and sending it to Mark B. to audition.

ALL212

mrbiron wrote: »

Did you buy another....?

Darn tempting... I've got one sitting on a shelf now unused so I'm not real sure where this one would go!

msg wrote: »

Curious about these kits. Can anyone classify the sound and maybe list some other prior gear for comparison and how the Crack/Speedball compares?

I'm thinking about building one and sending it to Mark B. to audition.

If you hit up the Bottlehead forum you'll get a better picture. I've built every headphone amp Bottlehead offers but other than built in headphone amps I've really not much to compare these to. You'll need high impedance cans to use on these.

Roughly speaking:
Without speedball very "tuby" very pleasant.
With Speedball a bit less tuby and precise, still very pleasant. You can use a wider range of tubes with the speedball.

Some guys have put the speedball in and like the non-speedball sound better. They are few and far between but it's an easy mod to pull it back out.

SCompRacer

You could start a Bobblehead store. I mean Bottlehead.

agfrost

I went for it.

How far from stock is/are your Crack(s) at this point, Aaron?

ALL212

Oh.... far. If you’re planning on non-stock I can give you advice on what works (you can hear it) and what doesn’t make much difference

agfrost

Cool. Suspect I will build it stock for starters, do it w/o Speedball initially, etc. as they suggest.

Likely won't get to building until the school year is over.

ALL212

If you need help - even on the stock build - just whistle.

Check over pictures on the BH forum for build ideas. The biggest issue is thinking through what you'll do if you replace the 100uf caps. They big - box is not.

agfrost

I'll shoot you a PM anon. My order is still 'processing' so no hurries just yet.

Toolfan66

I keep hoping/waiting they will have a holiday sale like this one soon..

I am ready to pull the trigger..

ALL212

I think 15% off almost everything shortly. I’ll see if I saved the email

mhardy6647

Fortunately, I can resist headphone amplifiers I really don't like wearing nor listening to headphones.

Can't resist much of anything else, though

ALL212

From the email:

Black Friday? How about Gray Thursday!

Nearly every product will be 15% off on Thursday November 22nd and Friday November 23rd (does not include repair service, parts or Jäger Speakers). the sale will start at 12:01 a.m. PT on Thursday and go until midnight Friday.

They have things other than headphone amps there also...

ALL212

This also in the email:

A new way to order kits next year
Beginning in 2019 we will shift to a different way of producing our premium kits. Each kit other than the Crack headphone amp and upgrade kits will be offered for a limited order period a few times each year. For example, we may open a week long order window for Kaiju amps in, say, February, and maybe have an order window for BeePre preamps in March, and so on, much as we do now with the Jäger loudspeaker kit. This will allow us to more efficiently handle the order processing and hopefully keep the delivery period from stretching out as it does sometimes with our current system. We haven't yet worked out the details of which kit will be offered when. As soon as we do work that out we will let everyone know on the website and via the newsletter so that you can plan out your purchases for the year.

The Crack amp will not be limited like this, nor will upgrade kits. They will be available to order throughout the year and ship at the usual 4 or so week backlog.

If you wish to avoid the possibility of waiting a few months before being able to order any of the premium kits you can take advantage of the upcoming Gray Thursday and Black Friday sale. Those orders will be shipping beginning in early January 2019.