Considering leaving my love, the Lampizator Pacific 2. She has caused me repeated headaches, although it is not her fault, but my lustful heart is considering maybe a fresh start. Last night she died again and off she goes back into her shipping coffin.
What should I get next? Aries Cerat? Horizon? Stick to Sonos via Best Buy and not worry about international shipping?
I think youād like the TotalDAC offerings.
You can listen to my Unity, to get a feel for the flavor, but youāll need to go higher in their lineup to compete with the Pacific.
Plus no tube rolling to have issues with.
Read the post, that sucks.
What about stock sound or standard rolling?
Going by your WBF post these issues arise because of rolling esoteric tubes with adapters?
Can you live with the performance of the Pac2 with native tube rolling options? If so, you donāt have to ditch it right?
@orrman @archer
Just me, but if I stuck with stock tubes, I wouldnāt buy a Lampizator. But definitely see your point, I did ask the US distributor that question last night and he himself supports tube rolling.
The risks with āstandard rollingā is that even if tubes are damaged in shipping, that can result in circuit damage. Itās a risk without a tube testerā¦ maybe thatās the answer.
Partly, itās a bit more complicated than that.
The adapters were bad, but that really is extremely unusual, Iāve never checked an adapter Iāve sourced from anywhere until Keith had his issues (since then Iāve been paranoid about it).
Apparently the vendor in question has done this before though, but itās not been broadly publicized.
Even with the bad adapter he had a 50% chance of putting them, in the sockets in such a way he would have immediately noticed, and saved his DAC, but because they were split across channels, the balanced nature of the circuit hid it, and they were in there for months.
Itās been an expensive endeavor for Keith, heās had to replaced expensive bad/damaged tubes, and ship the DAC to Lampizator at his own cost and I can completely understand just getting fed up with it. Iād probably be in the same boat.
Itās just been a lot of bad luck, and hopefully after this repair cycle he never has an issue again.
Put the money into analogue and get an SMSL DAC! 
In all honesty man, given the headaches I donāt blame you but this is a first world problem and certainly the affliction that is hardware and squeezing the most out of it you can philosophy that many of us share.
Care to elaborate on this? As you know I was looking at that exact Pac2 before you bought and thought to make you an offer but would love to understand this more. If I had to guess about myself, I might roll some stuff but definitely on the conservative side of rolling as that isnāt something I enjoy enough to go deep.
Do you think there are better topologies that could have prevented this from happening?
I am asking because bad luck can happen to any tubed device.
Most tube devices arenāt balanced, and in this case youād have gotten silence one the channels, or if they were multiple tubes in parallel at least significant channel imbalance. Itās how I noticed it, I picked 2 of the 4 PT14ās and plugged them into the back sockets, if either one was bad I get silence in that channel, as it happened I picked the 2 bad ones, and got complete silence.
But yes technically any tube or for that matter SS amp can be damaged by a bad component. And yes you increase that risk by plugging in things that you donāt know are good.
We generally trust the seller to test and itās just not a common thing to see bad adapters like this shipped.
Most failures are going to result in no permanent damage, but in this case the failure doesnāt excessively load the PSU, so you donāt get a blown fuse, and in the end something else acts as a fuse.
FWIW The only issue Iāve ever had rolling tubes was a bad regulator taking out the fuse in my DNA amp.
When my GATRP3 arrives, Iād suggest you hear stock tubes, and then try the Siemens F2A + WE422A, and compare the two. Itās night and day. Stock tubes were meh. @Souldriver has stock tubes so I didnāt bother sending my Shuguangs.
I think the risk is lower if you buy new production tubes, like the new Western Electric, or new KR Audio, although some Elrogs have been known to have issues. Certainly I think Lampi owners, and because the Lampi products are advertised to be so broadly compatible w/ tubes even outside of the family of stock tubes (e.g. āTube Rolling Paradise!ā), people go nuts and buy tubes that require weird adapters and deviate further and further from ābasicā tube rolling. And thatās when risks accumulate.
I had PS Vane power and the regular kr 5u4g recti and those pa vanes were yuck. For $150 more the new production gl kt77 kick their ass.
Not sure if and when Iāll get a chance to hearā¦ this whole story is a good case study in what can go wrong with tubes and how expensive it can be to send these huge beasts back to Europe for inspection and fixing.
Iāve though about that a few times with respect to my gear - who knows how long their creators will live to support it and who else at all can try in case itās needed. Itās a price Iām willing to risk but does make me appreciate and think more about diy projects and maybe starting to learn more and experiment. DAC might be a big undertaking but amps seem like thereās some reasonable learning and catching up possible. Definitely speakers and subwoofers. Headphones are cheap enough itās not a problem imo
The Helene that was listed on USAM is in Portland. So maybe you can convince the seller to get an audition and see how it compares to the Pac2.
Thought about it. Very much so.
But at least Lampizator fixes me and takes care of me.
ACā¦ thatās something Iād rather admire in othersā homes. Like having a boatā¦
Well, unfortunately, I figured out what happened on Pacific incident #2.
Again, like what @orrman was referring to, I use this tube rolling adapter. Instead of a Russian 6n6p anode, I use dual C3G triode tubes via an adapter. Said fancy adapter has an option for a ground wire out the back b/c it allows grounding of the C3G metal can to further reduce EMI/RFI.
So yesterday I plugged in the ground cable to both C3G adapters, and something in the Pacific started to burn. Lo and behold, today I found out the adapter had a faulty connection between the grounding slot and the tube 1 anode pin. It was fineā¦ until I inadvertently connected it to the chassis ground.
Unclear at this point if this was yet another adapter that was bad at birth, or if my incident #1 (original post) had cause damage to this adjacent adapter. This adapter is well regarded in the Lampi community and even used by Lampizator on some demos.
Lol I second this! But seriously this is something I have done. I have a fairly serious (at least for me) analog setup and a decent digital setup (td d6 + rockna NET). I might upgrade the d6 to a triunity, which was the original intent of buying it anyways, but at this point I only listen to digital to see if I want to own something on vinyl or if I really want to listen to something that I donāt have on vinyl. I guess another use case would be if I have guests over whose musical tastes donāt line up with mine (and donāt bring their own vinyl lol).
You already have a P8 right? Sorry didnāt mean to derail this into an analog discussion.
Not sure if you meant me, but yes I have a P8/Apheta3->Sutherland Little Loco mk2.
Probably not the most effective sound/$, but whatever, itās idiot proofā¦
I enjoy my overseas brands of equipment, Japan, England, Poland, Russia, Italy, France, Sweden, Portugal etc.
a few of my pieces have had to travel around the world for repairs. Itās not fun, itās expensive and itās time consuming.
Good Luck, and if you choose to try your luck elsewhere itās completely understandable. Sorry to hear of your troubles. 
@keithc are these the sketchy adapters?
Hopefully this dude is not trying to pawn them off to an unsuspecting Lampi owner if they are the same.