Zen Variations 9

Dear all, I have been building the Pass ZenV9 with great results. I made the ZenV1 and ZenV4 before and was of course anxious to hear the new J-fet amp. To say the least, there was a lot of buzzing going on at DIYaudio.com about those J-fet's. So that of course made me curious. I can safely say that the ZenV9 is the best sounding amp that I have made so far. I am driving it from a X-CCS-CC-BosoZ preamp. I also tried it with a BoZ and a BosoZ with great results. I wouldn't hesitate running it from a plain BoZ at all. Spec's are: 2 pcs 300VA trafo's at 2x18V each followed by discrete rectifier's (DIY of course) and 4 pcs of Rifa 15.000uF electrolytes. Since this particular amp runs from a single-polarity supply, its 30.000uF per channel. That's enough, when its followed by NP's regulator. Its not exactly regulating as such in this case, but it does dispose of any noise from the psu, if there should be any. The amp weighs in at about 18kg. That's just under 40lbs. I also used a Thermistor and a DC filtering condensator at the AC input. The boards used are those from that magnificent DIY'er, Peter Daniel and Damian Antoniak. The boards are pretty broad, and that means that the fet's are placed at the edge of the heatsink if they are soldered directly to the board. I found that I had to connect the fet's through leads, in order to spread them out evenly on the heatsink. Otherwise the fets would end up too close the heatsinks top-edge, running way too hot. It is fully on purpose, that I stress this point. The chassis on the pic's is totally DIY of course. I shy away from complicated ways of doing things, wanting to see results. The case is pretty simple, but not too ugly, I think. At this point I am considering to do another build of the ZenV9. My good friend from Mexico, Antonio, has designed a board for the ZenV9, both right and left dedicated boards, that will accommodate Audiophile components. Thanks to Nelson Pass for giving this circuit to all of us:-) Regards Steen(oe) Oervad Jensen.