worktheweb
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- Feb 20, 2024
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Ok, of the 185 people that rated this kit a 1 or a 2, how many of you have actually assembled it? If you haven't actually assembled it and listened to it I really don't see how you can rate it. That's ridiculous. It's like asking my mother for her opinion on something.
Here's a hypothetical to illustrate: "Say Bob, how is Restaurant X?" Terrible. "Terrible, really? What was the food like?" I didn't eat there. "Say what?"
That said, I recently assembled a GT-104 kit. I have 4ohm speakers so that makes the most sense. MB Quart 2000 towers circa 1993. Recently as in I finished it yesterday 3/21/24. I wanted something more challenging than the Pass ACA kits that I had assembled previously. This kit did not disappoint. It was exponentially more complex than the ACA kit! So complex I decided to build one channel twice. Well, not deliberately. I'll explain.
I spent the extra money for the printed manual which was well worth it. I have a laser printer but why print B/W when I can have a bound color copy of the instructions? The manual has clear steps and a checklist for every single component. For the amplifier components there's 2 columns, one for each channel. Mine has a 3rd column.
I assembled everything then during final checking I realized I had swapped a 25 for 25K resistor on one board and had mixed up some diodes. I should point out I wasn't super careful with diodes on my first channel. Every component with a multiple is on a strip and I separated some diodes then realized I could barely tell them apart. My confidence on that channel was low. I fixed all that stuff then wired everything up and put it in the chassis for final testing.
Power supply had proper voltage, the LEDs lit up on each amp channel and the protection relays clicked on as expected. I went to adjust the bias voltages and realized I had 0V on each channel. Hmmm. Started troubleshooting although didn't really know what I was looking for. Mistakenly shorted two diodes with the lead of my volt meter and saw a spark. Oops, hope that doesn't come back to haunt me! (It did). Gave up and emailed tech support at Akitika and fessed up about the short. Got an email reply and a text message almost immediately which was pretty remarkable. Dan (the owner of Akitika) responded and said based on my symptoms I had most likely reversed the two driver transistors. I took a look and that is exactly what I did. Sigh. I unscrewed the heatsink and amp assembly which was complicated by the fact I had smeared heat sink compound on the bottom of it. I have a nice Hakko desoldering gun so I made short work of the transistors and retested. Still no bias voltage and this time no LEDs. Aw crap. Disconnected the amp boards and tests one at a time. The left one, the one I had messed up the diodes on, worked great and I was able to adjust bias. The one I shorted was ungood and actually made the power supply go into protection and shut down.
I emailed Dan back and gave him the good/not good news and he and I made plans to get together the next day. He wanted to talk with me about what happened, what I did, etc. We talked for over 40 minutes and he walked me through some troubleshooting. After frying a resistor during testing he concluded that I had more than likely blown an output transistor and who knows what else. I could start shotgunning replacement parts but his recommendation was that I buy another channel. I agreed and he sent me an invoice and shipped it the next day. I assembled that channel in record time and it worked perfectly.
I've done some initial listening and like what I'm hearing so far. Clarity is great, bass control is also very good. Going to play background music and stuff for a few days and get into more serious A/B comparisons next week. I bought one of the Neohipo VU meters based on Amir's review (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CLP33P5D) so I can switch amps without rewiring. The Neohipo is cool plus if you forget to turn it on the sound just passes through on the last selection you were using. I'll compare the GT-104 to my parallel mono ACAs and probably against my Proton AA-1150 which is also 50wpc.
So do I recommend this kit? Hell yeah! The customer support I received from Dan was fantastic! I had a lot of fun putting it together. Tons of components to identify, measure, then solder. I kinda Zen'd out during assembly. The most important part of this kit though is - I built this. 1.5 times in fact. Heh. My only goal was to see if I could handle a more complicated kit especially one that has received so many positive reviews for sound quality. I looped back with Dan and let him know I completed it and that I was going to post a review to this thread. He replied and congratulated me and said he's updated the manual to reflect my failures, er experience. He may or may not respond here. I might buy the preamp kit to see how it sounds compared to the Nutube kit I built from DIYaudiostore.com.
I edited this to add pix of the amp and of the manual. My wire runs inside the amp were cleaner the first time I assembled it. Not gonna lie, 2nd time through I was impatient. You can also see heat sink compound smears on the heat sink which I may or may not clean off.
Bob J.
Here's a hypothetical to illustrate: "Say Bob, how is Restaurant X?" Terrible. "Terrible, really? What was the food like?" I didn't eat there. "Say what?"
That said, I recently assembled a GT-104 kit. I have 4ohm speakers so that makes the most sense. MB Quart 2000 towers circa 1993. Recently as in I finished it yesterday 3/21/24. I wanted something more challenging than the Pass ACA kits that I had assembled previously. This kit did not disappoint. It was exponentially more complex than the ACA kit! So complex I decided to build one channel twice. Well, not deliberately. I'll explain.
I spent the extra money for the printed manual which was well worth it. I have a laser printer but why print B/W when I can have a bound color copy of the instructions? The manual has clear steps and a checklist for every single component. For the amplifier components there's 2 columns, one for each channel. Mine has a 3rd column.
I assembled everything then during final checking I realized I had swapped a 25 for 25K resistor on one board and had mixed up some diodes. I should point out I wasn't super careful with diodes on my first channel. Every component with a multiple is on a strip and I separated some diodes then realized I could barely tell them apart. My confidence on that channel was low. I fixed all that stuff then wired everything up and put it in the chassis for final testing.Power supply had proper voltage, the LEDs lit up on each amp channel and the protection relays clicked on as expected. I went to adjust the bias voltages and realized I had 0V on each channel. Hmmm. Started troubleshooting although didn't really know what I was looking for. Mistakenly shorted two diodes with the lead of my volt meter and saw a spark. Oops, hope that doesn't come back to haunt me! (It did). Gave up and emailed tech support at Akitika and fessed up about the short. Got an email reply and a text message almost immediately which was pretty remarkable. Dan (the owner of Akitika) responded and said based on my symptoms I had most likely reversed the two driver transistors. I took a look and that is exactly what I did. Sigh. I unscrewed the heatsink and amp assembly which was complicated by the fact I had smeared heat sink compound on the bottom of it. I have a nice Hakko desoldering gun so I made short work of the transistors and retested. Still no bias voltage and this time no LEDs. Aw crap. Disconnected the amp boards and tests one at a time. The left one, the one I had messed up the diodes on, worked great and I was able to adjust bias. The one I shorted was ungood and actually made the power supply go into protection and shut down.
I emailed Dan back and gave him the good/not good news and he and I made plans to get together the next day. He wanted to talk with me about what happened, what I did, etc. We talked for over 40 minutes and he walked me through some troubleshooting. After frying a resistor during testing he concluded that I had more than likely blown an output transistor and who knows what else. I could start shotgunning replacement parts but his recommendation was that I buy another channel. I agreed and he sent me an invoice and shipped it the next day. I assembled that channel in record time and it worked perfectly.
I've done some initial listening and like what I'm hearing so far. Clarity is great, bass control is also very good. Going to play background music and stuff for a few days and get into more serious A/B comparisons next week. I bought one of the Neohipo VU meters based on Amir's review (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CLP33P5D) so I can switch amps without rewiring. The Neohipo is cool plus if you forget to turn it on the sound just passes through on the last selection you were using. I'll compare the GT-104 to my parallel mono ACAs and probably against my Proton AA-1150 which is also 50wpc.
So do I recommend this kit? Hell yeah! The customer support I received from Dan was fantastic! I had a lot of fun putting it together. Tons of components to identify, measure, then solder. I kinda Zen'd out during assembly. The most important part of this kit though is - I built this. 1.5 times in fact. Heh. My only goal was to see if I could handle a more complicated kit especially one that has received so many positive reviews for sound quality. I looped back with Dan and let him know I completed it and that I was going to post a review to this thread. He replied and congratulated me and said he's updated the manual to reflect my failures, er experience.
He may or may not respond here. I might buy the preamp kit to see how it sounds compared to the Nutube kit I built from DIYaudiostore.com.I edited this to add pix of the amp and of the manual. My wire runs inside the amp were cleaner the first time I assembled it. Not gonna lie, 2nd time through I was impatient. You can also see heat sink compound smears on the heat sink which I may or may not clean off.
Bob J.
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