Recommend me a girlfriend system

My girlfriend wants something to play her iPod / laptop through. What do you recommend for as little as possible?

I have some speaker drivers, but no box to put hem in and I can't really be bothered to build one right now.

 

jbl duettes (active)

 

Simon, tell Eunji she can have my pair of Cyrus 780 for nowt.
Just get her a cheap amp on ebay.

 

Rob, thanks for that, I actually forgot my Dad has two pairs of the similar Missions! He doesn't use either pair so I'm sure he won't miss one.

Can you recommend an integrated amp for about £20 on eBay?

 

I'll go look....

 

I got this (in silver)



http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290582563197&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:GB:1123

And I'll put it with these



Image taken from the net... do you spy the Maggies in the background?

 

So here we are, for the total of £14.

I'm pleased, it seems better made than I expected. The front really is solid aluminium not silver paint. The transformer is +/-30V (so about 40V rectified) and I guess 150VA. It doesn't say VA but it is sizeable and heavy.

Given corners were not cut on the TX I'm a little sad to only see 4,400uF per rail. I might see what I can fit in there given the height limit but I'm sure I can get far more.



The input board is populated by a couple of NE4558 and a LM324N op-amps. What does the set-up look like to you guys? I think the small orange caps and resistors must be RF immunity, and the electrolytic are DC blocking. I'm uncertain from a quick look exactly what the other bits do perhaps some is front panel control?



The main output devices are B817 and D1047.

 

All that for £14!

Look very nicely made.
Doubt that would catch fire.

I wouldn't worry about the 4400uf caps as you have two per channel and most budget amp will share only one pair.

The row of electros by the inputs will almost certainly be for dc blocking - very sensible.
10uf or 100uf is common.

Be interested to see how it performs.

 

Actually each cap is 2,200uF so it is 4,400uF total per rail. Not terrible for a low power amp but not ideal either.

I think the first NE4558 (dual op-amp) is an input buffer followed probably by the volume control and a second buffer. It has bass and treble controls (yay!) so I think that is the second NE4558. Only looking at the picture I wonder if the LM324 does.

Sorry for the huge pictures by the way, but for one I was lazy to resize and secondly I thought it good to show all the detail if anyone wants to guess at the design.

I must admit I hear some distortion in the system as a whole, but then I'm probably being too fussy.

Oh and for those who think women like speaker grills, all three women 25, 23 and 22 years old think the Missions look better with the drivers showing.

 

Someone pointed out the bias diodes are not actually touching the heatsink

 

The very cheap Vifa tweeter in the Mission can sound a bit gritty and 'shushy' so don't be quick to blame the amp. Quite noticeable when you are used to a clean tweeter.

 

You know something funny, while we say a pulsing woofer makes the sound 'woof, woof, woof', Koreans say it goes 'pang, pang, pang!'

 

Source first - get a girlfriend! ;-)

 

Afternoon Mark.

Then he'd have two and that's just greedy

 

Too much bottom-end?

</slaps self>

Waiter! More mojitos!