About Pass DIY

Nelson Pass has been an early contributor to the audio DIY scene; It has been said that Nelson has a knack of explaining engineering things very clearly in a few words, and that he obviously enjoys doing it. He is also a very active contributor at www.diyaudio.com. Being very generous with advice, tips, and complete amplifier designs that people can build.

What does Nelson Pass get out of this interaction?

“I like to speak to the teenager (me) who wanted to know this stuff—that's my audience. There are always people who appreciate a decent explanation that gets to the meat and potatoes. I see it all as light entertainment with a little education thrown in. The academic paper approach has its place, but it seems intended for people who mostly understand the stuff already. If you want to communicate with DIYers, you depend more on colorful analogies, a little hand waving, and very little  differential calculus. I get lots of personal satisfaction out of the whole enterprise. It gives me an outlet for some cool ideas and things that otherwise would stay bottled up, and I have an excuse to explore offbeat approaches purely for their entertainment value. Also, the process of communicating DIY stuff is a two way street—I would say I get about as much as I give. Nelson Pass”

Bride of Zen — Nelson Pass / 1994

This is the second installment of a trilogy of construction projects centered around the performance obtainable from absolutely minimalist circuitry. Part one described the Zen amplifier, a 10 watt single-ended class A power amplifier using a single MOSFET gain stage. In this piece we will examine its preamplifying mate, also a single gain stage MOSFET circuit. A lot of what I might say about this design has already been expressed in the Zen amplifier piece, and will not be repeated here. It is enough to say that I continue to be very intrigued by the sound of very simple topologies,… More...

Burning Amplifier # 1 — Nelson Pass / 2009

The Burning Amp Festival is an event every October in San Francisco. Do-it-yourself audio enthusiasts from all over gather to show off their projects, listen to talks and equipment demos, and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Having a very large collection of audio parts and diminishing storage space, I seem to have fallen into the role of Santa Claus there, distributing components and cheap advice, with white hair, beard and a large elf (Colin Pass) to add verisimilitude. This year we also brought a batch of unfinished amplifiers, consisting of a chassis, connectors, transformer, power supply capacitors and… More...

Zen Variations 9 — Nelson Pass / 2006

In ZV8 we dipped our toes into the waters of power JFET transistors using the new Lovoltech LU1014D in a simple circuit. The focus of the project was on the JFET itself, and except for a cascode transistor the rest of the amplifier used only passive components. Here in four installments we will increase the complexity of the circuitry around the JFET with an eye toward distortion performance surpassing any of the Zen projects to date. Much of this project will make reference to ZV8 (AudioXpress, January 2006 and www.passdiy.com), which discusses the characteristics of the LU1014D power JFET and… More...

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