I haven’t heard a Baltic 3, I’d personally take an Amber 3 over an Yggy 10 days out of 10, BUT I’m not using an Elekit 8900, and that probably benefits from a more dynamic presentation.
It’s one persons opinion, it’s entirely valid for him in his system.
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I’ve been meaning to talk about the Elekit 8900. I saw Herb Reichert talk about the 8900 on an episode of the Audiophiliac and it stayed with me especially what he mentioned about those designs but with top shelf components purchased in the kit. Roughly throwing every highest quality part at the build it was still under $5k.
That’s something that I can build in my limited space and put some hella TLC into the build. Is what Herb says here genuine or is it his interpretation coloring his commentary?
The designs are straight forwards and solid (usually implementations of the datasheet load lines), I have an 8150 6L6 amp (wanted a 6L6 amp), mine had upgraded resistors, and can accommodate considerably larger interstage capacitors. Headphone out is an afterthought on the 8150, and has an audible noise floor, it has an op amp input buffer, and it’s not the best pot in the world (and that might not be east to fix given the casing).
The stock transformers seem to be OK , but I know people will sell you Lundahl transformer upgrades for the 8900, coupling caps and resistors are easy upgrades. A lot of people swear by the amp.
I will say there are tradeoffs in designing an amp for both a 2A3’s and 300B’s, though Elekit do like to include jumpers, that might ameliorate that to a point.
They are circuit board based designs, and while they aren’t a difficult build, the docs aren’t bottlehead crack specific, and you need to pay attention, I missed a solder joint when I built mine, and it worked except intermittently dropping one channel, it took me several hours with a scope to find it, and I must have looked right at the missing joint a dozen times and missed it.
It’s also the only amp I’ve shocked myself on multiple times, the AC input runs on a naked rail down the left side if the case, and it’s just too easy to touch when the case is open.
So short version it’s a probably good 300B design, know what your getting into, if you spend $5K on parts and can’t get it working, what’s the play?
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Thanks for the summary. You’re right about being out in the cold. I’m pretty confident that I can put it together but in the end, it’s an unknown quantity to throw that much into and to commit to a high dollar parts value build as the “first” build is risky. You can get a base kit for under $2k and get your feet wet first.
Just thoughts, it’s just that there is a strong allure to a DIY, especially if that can net you a very high quality bang for the buck product. A lot of peace of mind just getting a known amp with good synergy with the rest of your gear.
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Even with amorphous lundhal OPTs, AN capacitors, the bill of materials when buying from Victor runs to close to 2-2.2k and he can put it together for you for $300. So it’s a 2.5k amp.
I enjoyed it when I had it. Even while using the speaker out in 300B mode I felt it wasn’t driving the Susvara with as much authority as the Studio-T. But for easier to drive headphones it’s great value for money. A few established folks on SBAF suggested I get the 8600/8900 rather than the modern EC amps. I can attest that the 8900 is tuned a bit similar to EC house sound.
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I don’t want to dissuade you.
I’d consider my issue to be a worst case scenario, because the fault was only audible intermittently, and seemed to refuse to happen with the case off (probably ran cooler), pinning it down was tricky.
I’d convinced myself it had to be a bad part, and was ready to start pulling things off the board to test them when I found it.
Having said that I suspect anyone but me looking at it would have noticed the missing solder joint.
They come with circuit diagrams and a decent set of labelled test points on the board.
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In response to this sole comment and to the authors credit, he states clearly, “In HIS particular set up”
I have found my B3 to lose the ability to sound natural when mated with a DDC in my experiences with it. in various set ups when I included a DDC it “flattened” the sound and lost that extra soundstage quality.
I found the B3 takes on that extra special quality that puts it up a notch in the authors area where he found it lacking matched to a front end that synergizes best with its USB input.
This is SUCH a subjective quibble that I deleted and re-wrote this post several times over because I’m not sure if I am adding any value in my response simply because what I can make the DAC do is NOT necessarily replicated by others and that simply means because I have other pieces of equipment in play also performing their own part and I simply got the DAC as a whole to integrate better🤷
I’m sorry, I really like the DAC, I did not care for the stock tubes much after I tried a variety of rolls and mine is a vs3.5 which, if we all agree small changes make a difference, is basically not a stock B3, thus my comments may all be moot and wasted breath.
Sorry, I’m rambling, I do manage to get some really good performance out of the Lampizator Baltic 3.5 that I have and since I have experienced those “WOW” moments in the soundstage in various system iterations I felt the need to speak up.
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Yep. Unless you are very early RCA you tend to get the warner, softer, more laid back feel from that tube. It will last forever though.
Is the Pacific volume control digital or analog? @Polygonhell @M0N
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It’s an expensive analog 64 step Relay based unit.
The option price for the balanced unit was almost $6K.
Only gotcha is it will only work correctly if the input impedance of the amplifier is > 20KOhms, if it isn’t, the volume will jump between some steps. In practice this is never an issue for a pre/power amp, and mostly is not an issue for headphone amps, since it’s largely determined by the size of the pot, but it can be.
Should be noted Pacifics without it have an internal switch to set the output voltage, so your not necessarily stuck with the very hot output.
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did not know that, thanks for sharing! what voltages are available?
I think they state 3 and 7V, but the problem is it’s not entirely true and depends on the output tube to some extent. Some are hotter than others.
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I do think the Duracell color combo is very pretty. Mine has a lot more dust on it than that though.
I assume that’s a 596 regulator?
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Yes went back to stock KR 300B RK anniversaries + USAF 596 frankie. The combo is surprisingly awesome – just right fleshiness, tight, deep bass, very quiet and transparent and detailed. I think this might be my defacto combo to unthrone, but there’s a few more incoming tubes 
The only downside is that the 596 is huge. So now it’s 14" tall from the base so can’t move it from the top shelf anymore.
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THIS right here, height clearance has become a frustration and issue to me with various pieces now 
Oh the battle and pain…
I feel your top shelf only pain.
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I hear those kron 300b’s are great, but failure rate is high according to one credible source, and I believe you don’t get any warranty
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That would suck 
Haven’t heard that, but these are the KR 300B RK anniversary version. Not sure what makes it great except for the thicker glass and higher vacuum.
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I have KR quads of RK 242’s, T100’s and PX25’s plus 2 5U4G’s including an RK5U4G, and no failures FWIW.
I think the failure rates on modern tubes are all exaggerated, I’ve seen speculation that KR, Elrog, PSVane and EML all have high failure rates, I think the problem is the volumes are so low, that one or two negative forum posts establishes the “fact”.
FWIW the only bad modern tube I’ve had and I’ve owned probably 40+ was a LinLai Elite, which was replaced by an equally bad one. But I’d err towards it being an issue with QC on the batch of tubes rather than an endemic Lin Lai issue.
It is true some of the KR tubes don’t exactly match the spec of the historical ones, though it’s usually just higher maximums. And other manufacturers do it with some tubes, no-one makes a new production 6SN7 that doesn’t match 6SN7GB spec.
The part that does get dodgy is manufacturers guaranteeing tubes then refusing to replace them when they fail WE has done a lot of this, I’ve seen reports of Elrog doing it, though you now need to be very careful how you buy those to even get a warranty, and he insists you tell him what amplifier you are going to put it in. Even there with forum posts you don’t get the entire story.
The is an interesting comparison and measurements of WE300B vs the Elrog ones over on SBAF, the first time I’ve seen such a comparison, with absolutely no indication from the measurements why the Elrog one sounds better to the poster.
All historic tubes will have had relatively tight tolerances, yet they sound different, it seems to be widely accepted that the larger glass tubes tend to sound better than the smaller form factors because the filament designs can be less compromised. Single plates are usually better than dual plates etc.
So I suspect filament design is a lot of the difference, but exactly what it is impacting is unclear.
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