Hey Don you should post pics of some of your past amp builds somewhere on this forum sometime.
I have something better for this thread ;-)
I am guessing there are all sorts of levels of frivolous , to me this falls into that domain as it is not making a product from naught but tweaking something to suite the needs of the end user.
LFF had put out a call for help a while back to mod his Musical Fidelity XA-1 for headphone use.
I am glad I sent him a pm as it has enabled me to get to know one of the great folk in this hobby and that is what this community is all about. We started off with a pretty (grubby :p ) stock XA-1.
After a little back and forth it was decided to maul the front panel and forego the option of "return to stock" should this end up in epic fail.
The tape monitor switch removed to make space in that section of the amp.
Somewhere along the ways LFF decided that an internal DAC might be a nice touch
so the tape in and loop out RCA's were removed
and the dac was dropped into place
and that left us with the morphed XA-1
XLR and TRS output jacks with a switchable output for speakers or headphones through a resistor network
small details not visible are an led indicator to tell you that the dac is plugged in ( just below the selector ) and relocated the power led to the bottom of the front panel.
The rear panel now has a usb input for the dac and a 3.5mm jack to loop out the dac in case you want to use it for anything else.
I switched the black screws to the front intentionally as I liked the aesthetic, LFF is of course free to switch em back.
and so ends a frivolous tale of LFF's XA-1
It has not yet been put into service as I am waiting on a small usb cable with dual right angle connectors ( only way it would fit ) - hopefully in the week and then LFF will have to give us his feedback
..dB
