Tag: music

50L6 HiFi

Posted on by Elliott

I love music so much that some years ago I started learning electronics, going on to work at CoffmanLabs building amazing valve-state HiFi systems. I bought some spare parts that weren’t going to be used and started making my own hot-rodded versions, functional objets d’art. Electrically this is basically a stripped down Prautes 50L6 headphone amp, where I made a few internal design changes and this chassis… the pattern is done in pure gold (as in “actual” gold), based on a photo I took of a ceiling in the Alcazar in Sevilla, Spain. The controls are on the back so it’s possible to see more art, and the front panel is a mandala designed by a 16th century Italian philosopher. The amp also lights up :D. Although nominally only a ~3W headphone amp, I use it to drive 99dB efficient speakers quite capably…. I have the parts to build a total of five, inquiries welcome. (I’ll also soon have a matching design for the CoffmanLabs G1A/B) — Contact

Public Works — Substance

Posted on by Elliott

Please Applaud with Hands Only

I have often held in my hand a black walnut. It has a shell like stone. It has many internal stony reinforcements. But in between is an unimpressive, unimportant-looking meaty substance that has a mysterious and tremendous power. If you plant this seed under certain circumstances, heat is produced inside.

Now, whether it is a seed, or a teacher, or a businessman, or a student, when we begin to heat inside, something begins to happen. Your leaders may put a lot of heat on you from the outside, but that doesn’t always do much good. The heat that does the greatest good is the heat that is generated on the inside. Success, like failure, is an “inside” job.

When this walnut begins to heat inside, it produces a mysterious power that breaks that stony shell as though it were paper, and a little shoot works its way up through the soil to become a great walnut tree. That is, there is some mysterious power inside of a walnut shell that has the ability to attract out of the soil and the air and the water all of the elements necessary to become a great walnut tree—including wood, and foliage, and blossoms, and fragrance, and fruit.

From The Miracle of Personality, by Elder Sterling W. Sill