Bottlehead Crack Headphones Amplifier (Part 4) More Review

It is been a while since I listen to this Bottlehead Crack Headphones amplifier.

You can follow this link when I received it at the first time here, then the cleaning process here, and when I replaced all the vacuum tube with the new old stock Tungsol 5998 and GE 5814 here.

This Bottlehead Crack amplifier is a very simple circuit with the output transformer-less design. I can say that I become a solid-state guy for a long time because building a vacuum tube amplifier is expensive for the vacuum tube itself. Then the good transformers is even more expensive to buy. But that is not the case with this Bottlehead Crack amplifier.

If you want to listen the music with better sound quality and definitely want your headphones to have a good amplifier to pair with, then you should consider to have this Bottlehead Crack amplifier.

Before I going deeply to the sound quality review with this amplifier, maybe I should share a little bit technical about this amplifier.

The Bottlehead Crack amplifier design is 2 stages vacuum tube amplifier in a single ended configuration with zero negative feedback.

The output transformer-less is one of the point to makes this amplifier more affordable, yet simple.

The headphone that I use in this test is Sennheiser HD600. This headphone is one of my favorite so far.

With this amplifier, the mid-range sound is warmer and overall music presentation is quite detail and dynamic. Listen to the music with this amplifier is just like entering the new of music presentation. It is because the vacuum tube that coloring the sound in the good way.

I am quite serious here, no one love flat music but it is hard to admit it. All music deliver to the ears has been contaminated with good coloration that anyone debate this is better and that is not. Even the coloration start from the recording, the DAC, the amplifier, or the driver.

Well my statement above is debatable for sure. I told you earlier to having this amplifier by yourself and experience the music from it. The mid-range frequency like vocal and instruments have more detail and more extended. It is more refined on how this amplifier deliver the music.

I can say this vacuum tube amplifier is also detail in the music presentation, not only on the mid-range, but also at the high frequency. This detail is smooth that not make your head dizzy.

The bass head will not like this amplifier. The bass are not loud. It is quite deep but not as deep as the solid-state amplifier. I know many people like bass loud and heavy. Some of them determination the good audio system from how loud the bass is. But personally, I think the bass is enough to deliver the music beat nicely.

In this test, I listen many music genre. And the very interesting is when I play the Metallica music album. Wow! they are great! Every note are pronounce lively.

So, is having this Bottlehead Crack headphones amplifier could be my end game for finding the best amplifier for headphones?

I guess so.

With this amplifier, I just thinking to selling all solid-state amplifier I had right now.

But hey, there is an upgrade version for this Bottlehead Crack amplifier called the Speed-ball module. This module is additional kit and the main purpose is filtering the power input to the vacuum tube instead only using resistors. Is this a good for future upgrade? I don't know yet until I experience itself. But for now, I could not happier listening my music collection with this amplifier.

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