Built: February 2019
This was my very first DIY headphone amp build.
The board was cheap and the layout looked fairly easy so I decided to give this a go. Populating the board was the easy part.
If you look closely at the board you will notice that some of the solder pads are really small. This is fine if you plan to have all components on board, but if you decide to use a custom enclosure like I did then you will need to locate things like the volume pot and headphone jack off board and soldering wires to those tiny pads can be tricky as too much heat from the soldering iron could potentially damage them so be very careful.
This is what my completed board looks like. I took the time to use some IPA solvent to clean the flux from the underside of the board.
I used Cardas Quad solder for this build as I found it very nice to work with and it contains silver as well as lead so it flows well and conducts well too.
Very nearly there, panels cut out and components fitted, just the wiring up to do. That hot glue for the LED is not staying, it was just to hold the test LED in place, its a standard blue but I bought a nice pastel colour ice blue to use instead to use with a LED holder.
The Nutube which was designed by Korg is the heart and sould of this little amp and it sounds fantastic. It has similar sound characteristics to a traditional tube but its based on VFD (vacuum flourescent display) technology which enables it to be low powered whilst also giving a lifespan of around 30,000 hours which is considerably more compared to a traditional tube.
The finished product, with a few alterations I might add. You can see Burson V5i OP Amps installed but I have the V6 Classic's installed at present which I am rather enjoying.
