nicely done !

I built both. 

While I was waiting for the transformers to arrive I threw a couple of caps in.  The up-side to the cap coupled build is it can be done very cheap.  It seemed more than bit bright, lacked any weight, and sounded a bit tinny.  It's pretty neat what can be done for so little money, but...

The transformer build kicks ass in every way. Everything filled out and the low end came to life. I'd say it still leans slightly to the bright side, but a few EQ clicks has things sounding how I like things.  Everything is much more natural sounding, especially the mids and upper mids.  It's really open and airy (with or without the 800's) and remarkably fast/dynamic.  This is one of those amps that would catch peoples ears on a short listen, say at a meet.

It's sounding better with the 800's than I expected, as in very good.  Stop the music and it's dead quiet; you can crank the volume to the stop and it's black.  I'd really like to try some orthos with it, but I've got none left. 

I'm pretty impressed for a $250 Darkstar amp.

Thanks, and Yessir.  It's not a bad case but a few things about it...

1. The aluminum is basically sheet like, so when milling the work tends to want to ride up the tools.  Easy to make mistakes if you don't have the tool speed right.

2.  If, like me, you mount your boards, transformer, etc... to the bottom plate, you have to wire things up with enough slack to remove the cover/top (the part with the wood sides) which will have all the switches, XLRs, LED, Pot etc.. mounted to it.  This was sort of interesting to do and had me worried that I'd end up with a wire laying somewhere that would create noise in the circuit... but everything turned out fine.  Obviously not quite as easy as having everything mounted to a single piece and a having a simple cover plate to open.

looks beautiful.  that looks like quite the drill press.

That's one serious bit!  1-1/4"?  Is that the Grizzly clamping kit in the background?