Audio Note Kit - L5 Mentor - build experience

What is remarkable, is they are not a manufacturer, they are a "kit" company. All that they are doing is scooping up parts and placing them in bags, providing "concise" written directions to follow and shipping out a box or boxes with the aforementioned parts and directions.

While all of the other non-kit companies are providing complete, finished and working products.

Here is a "kit" company that is selling and collecting money on kits that can not be built.

In my youth, I used to build a lot of electronic kits. As I recall, they came complete with all of the parts and clearly labeled directions that were necessary to properly assemble said kit.

In the "old days", they sold many complicated kits that required P2P wiring. Kit companies usually provided the wire that was necessary to build the kit. But, the wire was only bulk wire. Not already cut to length and pre-tinned.

 

Unfortunately, this seems to be an ANK Kit problem. All of my builds with Bottlehead and Elekit (using Victor Kung) had all the correct parts and excellent instructions. And with Victor, when parts came from a different source, he kept you in the loop with all the shipping details. When dealing with ANK, it seems like one must accept the fact that there will be a few missing/wrong parts and some head scratching in the directions. But as @finn alluded to, that can be smoke-filled, or worse, dangerous, which is unacceptable.

 

There is a very simply and obvious solution to dealing with ANK...

 

more specific suggestions always welcomed!

 

I tend to agree. The thing going for ANK kit is that the (arguably?) have the best sound and the quality of the parts and the finished product is top notch. That appeals to a niche market of DIY audiophile. I really would love to just order and get all the parts in one go and not having to deal with emailing back and forth trying to explain what's wrong, and then waiting for another 2 weeks before parts come.

 

Agreed, but as @jmpsmash states above, if you can get past all the problems, the finished kits are fantastic. They have a ton of drool-worthy kits. It sure seems like Brian spends more time scrambling around to fix his mistakes, rather than doing it right the first time.

 

I understand the builders enthusiasm for the cost per quality issue but I'm having a difficult time appreciating ANK's apparent business strategy - seems like they need to add a Q.C. person to augment their resident audio genius.

 

I don't get the impression that Brian is having any unusual difficulties building a kit than anyone else might have.

From my read, his difficulties arose from trying to follow directions, which did not match the component's.

I have an ANK L4 EL84 power amp of theirs. I bought it from another member, who had the wisdom and foresight to have it professionally assembled.

Even then, when I went to hook up the speakers, I found that there was nothing indicating and differentiating the 4-Ohm tap from the 8-Ohm tap.

So, I went to the online manual and looked at the directions, which showed one black banana style connector and two red banana style connectors on each side.

My unit has one one red and two black connectors for each channel.

I contacted the seller and found out that they had run short of red speaker connectors, so they sent two black ones instead of two red ones.

How many products do they make with speaker connectors? I would buy at least 500 black ones and 1,000 red ones at a time and when I got halfway through the box, I would reorder some more.

Or, how about reducing specific parts inventory by computer every time a unit is sold.

Have the computer do ordering once each week or every couple of weeks.

None of this is rocket science, just very bad management.

"business strategy"

 

I will find out in a couple of weeks if it is worth all the effort. To be honest, the circuit topology isn't anything extraordinary, just a pretty standard 6SN7 gain stage followed by ECC99 + OPT stage. So what makes it good?

The few things that can make difference are:

* the triple c-core OPT. it eliminates one output cap.
* the power supply design. although choke / shunt loaded PS isn't unique, just not in every tube amp.
* top quality components. ANK tend to spec the nicer and more expensive components, tantalum resistors, film cap, AN cables and copper/silver hookup wires (as I was told as I haven't received mine!), etc. I still don't know what caps I will get from Brian. Everytime I asked, he doesn't answer, but he hinted one of AN copper, Jupiter or VCap.
* people who spend this amount of money will spend the extra to get the best tubes, result in better sound.

so the combination above makes it sound good.

 

@Ilovefooty : I see you have the Sophia 6sn7 in your Mentor, have you tried the other ones like the Psvane or Black Treasure or other 6SN7? Any thoughts?

 

I am just about to swap the stock OPT trannys to triple C-cores in my 3.1 ANK DAC. is there any output caps that I need to get rid of it?
This is the DAC:
ANK Audiokits - L3.1 DAC Kit

Currently there are coupling caps on the 5687 line output stage board and after that the stock OPTs.

 

No i haven't tried those. But i've been using this Tung Sol black bottle for the last month or so and it's the best 6NS7 i've tried. While i loved the Sophia, the black beauty has more texture and is more liquid.

 

Legendary Tungol round plate!

 

I tried to look for the schematic of the DAC3.1 but cannot find any. If i guess correctly though, you won't need to get rid of any caps. If there are caps near the output it will be for cathode resistor bypassing. However, depending if there is any difference in electrical property of the C-Core vs the stock OPT, you might need to change the cathode resister to bias it properly. You should send Brian an email.

 

I used to own the 3.1 Signature DAC so I am familiar with the circuit. The audio circuit uses two gain stages—-the two halves of the 5687–with a 0.1uf coupling cap in between. The second stage is wired directly to the OPT so there are no further coupling caps.

 

So after emailing back and forth (mostly just chatting) with Brian, who was out of town, he has the proper Khozmo pot and the caps ordered. I asked for Jupiter instead of VCap. They are cheaper (relatively...) but seems that the sound will be more to my liking.

The remaining missing pieces, the wires and some misc stuff like the correct knobs will be sent out tomorrow. So hopefully I will find out what this baby sounds like this weekend.

From what I understand, ANK is a small operation, and I suspect from the mailing address Brian is working out of his home. I don't know what type of sales volume he gets from selling these kits. perhaps the revenue doesn't allow for more than an employee. In any case, there are plenty of room for improvement in the parts delivery process. Obviously, he needs a better process and more manpower. That takes better planning and expense. Which can be justified with more volume, the only issue is that ppl are put off from purchasing ANK by these negative reviews. Which doesn't help him.

 

Well, what would he expect?

 

Some updates!

More parts have arrived!

The only missing piece is the Khozmo attenuator which is being sent directly from the factory in Poland. Scheduled to arrive tomorrow. The only remaining pieces that are incorrect are the gold knobs. I was sent black ones.

But since he sent the wrong pot before, I was able to wire that up and it is sounding quite good at the moment. I expect it to be better when the Khozmo is installed!

In the end I got Silmics for the cathode bypass and Jupiter copper for the decoupling caps. I have some old Jensens and blackgate that I will try swapping in.

 

Awesome! I'd be curious to know how the Khozmo compares. What pot did you receive? I might upgrade the pot in my kit.

The Jupiter sound good at first, but then take a nosedive a few hours in. They will recover in about 50 hours and continue to get better. I've
noticed this on my kits. I had to pull the phono out of my system and I ran records on repeat for a couple days in my second system.
The EL84 amp just took the nosedrive also. Sounds rolled off and very flat with a lack of midrange. I need to update my thread soon!

 

Jupiter. I am burning in around the clock. Yesterday I had a friend come over right around the 24 hours mark and it sounded good already. I cannot wait to hear it open up even more!

As for pot. I didn't pay attention. I opened up the package and then saw that plasticy thing while expecting the larger Khozmo and I went and sent Brian a email right away. It is pretty crap, not uniform, the sound start muted and then suddenly jump louder even when i turn it slowly.

What pot do you have in your kit?

 

Nice! I'm also going by what others have said. I didn't listen to the phono critically between hours 5 & 50ish.
I might have to bring the amp back up into the system tonight, that would be close to 24 hours on it.

My amp came with Alps Blue as standard. Considered a good part and turns smoothly, but a stepped attenuator
should be a nice upgrade. I think the Khozmo has various resistor options also.

 

Right. A stepped attenuator with discrete resistors will always be better than a pot. My only concern at the moment is the step granularity. I am around 8-9 o'clock at comfortable listening level. The Khozmo is 48 steps. so I will get to use around 1/5 of the steps, which is 9-10 steps. I guess that's. In any case I will find out tonight.

Another thing I notice is that the output connection between the output transformer and the xlr connector is very sensitive. It is a balanced connection with +ve/-ve / neutral. I initially braided 3 wires together. I noticed the sound was very muted with highs roll off. I later put in a twisted pair of silver wires with the neutral separate and it opens it up a lot. At the moment I have those 2 running in parallel and both high and low sounds good. I might just leave it this way even though it is not the cleanest.

 

VCaps are very high quality and very linear, but in some applications can sound a bit too clean, depending on your tastes. In my L3 I've moved from the supplied Mundorf Supreme to the Jupiter Copper Foil. Break in is indeed long, but the sound is much better. More three-dimensional and a better sense of instruments in their own acoustic space.

As for potentiometer, I ditched the supplied Alps for an Acoustic Dimension 41-step pot. Much more open and natural. I'd be interested in hearing what Audio Note's own 100K pot sounds like. It's not very expensive, but I'm not in the mood at the moment to do more de-soldering/re-soldering.

John K.

 

I just installed an Audio Note 100k pot in my Bottlehead Crack. Buttery smooth to turn, and I expect it's a big step up from the stock pot included in the kit.

 

That's the reason I asked for Jupiter instead of VCaps. Sometimes too clean is not always a good thing.

In my humble old fashioned opinion, any decently implemented stepped attenuator will be better than any pot, even if it is Audio Note. But then, we are also not talking about a fair comparison as the stepped attenuator will almost always cost multiple times more.