Developing headphone tube amp - could do with a second opinion

mark_atdi

Hey all, sorry in advance if this is the wrong place for this sort of thread. But I could do with some help.

I run small a one man business (sole trader) just outside Manchester. I've been working on a headphone tube amp with one of my suppliers who make fantastic (guitar) tube amps. But this will be their first headphone amp. I may have underestimated the cost and experience required and bitten off more than I can chew...

I do think we've done a good job with the prototype but I really want a second opinion. Since I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. 

Not sure if anyone's interested in receiving a prototype headphone tube amp and giving their thoughts & suggestions on it? Ideally someone who has experience with the Little Dot I+ or other similar budget headphone tube amps.

Once it's done I'll happily give you one of the finished units for free as thanks. I'm not sure about retail price yet but should be somewhere between 130-180 GBP.

spark240

Never tried one...but I did just get a some Focal Clear Pro headphones ( competition win) and was looking to try a good HP amp !

Winny_Pooh

Have you seen the Milkman? I could possibly test it and record some Plexi & Vox clips via a Suhr reactive load to compare. I don't practice with headphones so I'd mostly be comparing on a set of studio monitors which you may or may not find interesting. 

You could of course just send it to someone like ICBM on here who'll give you some helpful perspective on the construction side of things too.

Sporky

Not sure how close I am to what you're after, but I've built my own hybrid headphone amp (sadly it was rubbish) , have a decent selection of low, mid and fairly high end headphones and do audio visual design and commissioning for a living.

Happy to have a listen with or without the promise of any freebie. No experience with the Little Dot I'm afraid. I usually use the headphone out of my Sapphire 2i2, though I have tried a couple of the cheaper Schitt Audio amps. 

maltingsaudio

Slightly off topic but I can understand a valve headphone amp for listening pleasure, but as a reference device how many hours can a valve headphone amp run for before it stops being reference? ( I do know it depends!)

normula1

My son tried one of the little dot amplifiers and it was OK at best. We tried several different types of valves and none sounded particularly great. IIRC the power supply got very hot as well. It currently resides in a drawer somewhere and was replaced by a Yamaha integrated amplifier using just the headphone output (don't ask.... he's got a convoluted use case with a couple of hi power resistors connected to the speaker outputs just in case it needs a load.

Matt_McG

Is this a tube hifi headphone amp? or tube guitar headphone amp?

I've experience of using solid state headphone amps (for hifi/mobile), e.g. CMoy types, and other similar small headphone amps. Also have decent (Meridian) hifi preamp at home with headphone output.

So I'd be happy to test/evaluate.