Proud DAK Novo owner

Complete Novo kit (PCB, case and PSU) arrived at work on Friday. Couldn't wait to get home and get started. However, I decided to fully digest GS's excellent manual (and a couple of beers) first and allocated Saturday morning to the fun part of soldering, building and testing.

As an aging EE engineer I've had more soldering experience than most so it only took me just a little over three hours (with several breaks) to get from three boxes of bits to a working audiophile standard headphone amp,  including the small amount of metalworking.
I was dreading the metalworking. I usually make such a dog's dinner of it all; but this was plain easy-peasy. I don't have a centre punch so I used a sharp bradawl and a couple of light taps of the hammer to lightly pierce the anodising around the countersinks and voila! all front and rear panel screws to phono ground and ground post just a gnat's away from zero ohms on the trusty Fluke DVM. The whole unit fitted together perfectly.

How does it sound? Well, I'm not very good at describing the sound in an audiophile-friendly way but what I can say is 'it sounds bloody lovely to me'. Well done Graham and team !

My other gear: I have a humble ION TTUSB turntable at the moment, so not particularly high-end at all there, although it is dragging an original and mighty fine Audio Technica AT115E MC with a brand new elliptical stylus. I need to check the VTF, overhang etc but visually it all looks good to me. I'm beginning to wish now that I hadn't put the old faithful Pioneer PL-whatever-it-was on the skip when we moved house! The cart is fed through the TTs hard-wired phono leads (yuk), via a recently acquired GS Gram Amp 2 Communicator (very nice indeed and now entering week two of burn-in) through some budget OFC interconnects to the Novo. Phones are four year old well-driven Grado SR80s.

After about twenty or so years of mainly CD (and more recently an excursion into compressed audio - eeeeek) I have begun to seen the light and started to enjoy some of my ageing vinyl collection like I never have before. I'm starting to hear more layers of instruments and vocals that just were not in the image before. The Who now sound almost as powerful as I remember them live. Chris Squire's bass sounds faster and more precise than ever. The acoustic sound of Neil Young and his band is so full of his country you can almost smell the pine. The soaring guitars of messrs. Howe, Hackett and Gilmour are ageless, haunting, moving, almost tear-making. Emerson and Wakeman show how close to DC you really can go with a Moog and the analogue sequencers and synths of Tangerine Dream now sound very comfortably analogue again, but now even more so.

I could go on ... but my only recommendation is to have a go at building one yourself! It's a lot of fun and you can take your time building it, say an hour each evening, and probably complete one in a week.

Graham, any ideas what's next? A DAK pre/power amp would be good ! 

I still need to cure the slight hum coming from my TT/ICs .. but that's another story and Ive read everyone's comments here about hum problems.







Edited by mikebailey61 - 14 Jul 2009 at 1:53pm

Thanks tg,

if I understand what you mean by 'trouble' correctly ... as a not-so-well-paid software engineer I envisage having very little 'trouble' ! I've lived in Huntingdon which, I'm sure you know, along with Cambridge, is one of the recognised homes of the UK HiFi industry (QUAD/Meridian/Mission etc etc) for almost 15 years now but have so far resisted the temptation to splash out on the big stuff yet - or indeed seek employment with them.  I have always looked at the boutique gear with a divided opinion. It's a combination of 'Yes, I want one and I want it now' and 'How can anyone justify charging/paying that much for a handful of components'.

Yes indeed, I think that my vinyl rebirth will be a long, gradual one. I'm sure my wife, and ex-wife/CSA, will all be glad to hear that too

If you meant the great analogue/digital debate, then, as I think someone on here quite rightly said, 'if it sounds good then it is good'.

I'm very pleased that GSP have been able to produce such a high quality kit like the Novo. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with next! No pressure there Graham

And yes, the Novo is beginning to mature. The Gram Amp 2 Communicator seemed to mature a lot very quickly. The Novo seems to be a lot slower and more subtle.

[/QUOTE]

The other one being Yorkshire [/QUOTE]

Oh yes, and God's Country too! How careless of me to forget Yorkshire
I lived and worked in West Yorks for a long time before I moved down to these flooded lowlands in search of financial gold. "Look, Lad. We live in a bloody swamp. " (Couldn't resist the Python extract).
 I'm still looking for that gold and still sadly miss the 'Wind and Wuthering' of Airedale and the friendly (but straight talking) nature of all the folks up there.

Good luck Les! I have been a lazy one and have yet to build the kit I received several months ago.