The Group Buy Has Now Ended - all boards have been shipped and received as far as I know. I have a limited number of extra boards that are available for purchase. However, I am currently working 7 days a week so I may not be able to process these orders for a week at least. Please contact me using the protocol described below adn I will do what I can to get you your PCBs as fast as possible.

This is the official thread to start the ordering phase of the group buy for DIY Millett Hybrid Diamond Buffer PCBs. We have now been through 3 rounds of prototypes and feel that the design is finished. These buffers were designed by Steinchen and developed in conjunction with the help of several members at DIYForums.org. The diamond buffers are a drop-in replacement for the BUF634 or OPA551 buffers used in the DIY Millett Hybrid project. The buffers consist of a single stereo board, which mounts to the existing buffer locations on any of the DIY Modified MH PCBs. See this site for information regarding the schematic, board layout and parts lists for the buffers. Please note that they will not work easily with Pete’s original boards.

KITS ARE NOT BEING OFFERED, ONLY THE BARE BOARDS. There is NO plan to offer kits or assembled buffers at any time; this is purely a DIY project.

Important notes about the project:

1. KITS ARE NOT BEING OFFERED, ONLY THE BARE BOARDS. There is NO plan to offer kits or assembled buffers at any time; this is purely a DIY project.
2. This project requires surface-mount soldering techniques for some of the resistors. This is not necessarily a project intended for beginners. Those with soldering experience on projects like the MINT (by Tangent) should have no issue with the assembly of these boards. With a little patience and care anyone can do it.
3. Builders will benefit from matching transistors, which requires one to either have a multimeter that can measure HFE (not many can) or build a simple circuit to use with a normal DMM to measure and match transistors. Information on matching transistors can be found here.
4. No testing of any kind has been done to see whether or not these buffers could be adapted to other designs that make use of the BUF634 buffer. If you’d like to try this go for it, but you’re on your own and please don’t ask me what happened if you nuke whatever circuit you’re trying to put the boards in.
5. The cost of this project was not insignificant. As a result the developers are exploring the option of trying to recoup a portion of the development costs as a part of the price of the group buy PCBs. At best the hope is to recover 25% of the development costs in terms of the parts-cost only. This completely ignores the time and effort expended to develop the buffers as well as any and all shipping expenses paid out by the developers in sending out units for building, testing and evaluation. Also, this will only come into play if the number of participants is sufficient to drive the cost of the boards to a predetermined level (no, that’s not open for discussion). Our goal first and foremost is to provide you the builder with a low-cost upgrade to your existing amp. Rest assured that no one is making a dime of profit off of this group buy.
6. Approximate cost of parts to populate one board (2 channels) is $20 for US residents ordering from DigiKey or Mouser. Canadian and International parts costs may vary.
7. Finally for listening impressions see the DIYForums.org site – we hope to have RMAA testing done by the time the group buy completes but we have yet to have one tester report that they thought the amp sounded worse with the DBs and that’s what’s important, right?

Given the anticipated interest in this project, the board costs are estimated to be approximately $6/ea. These boards have multiple SMD pads and as such are more expensive to produce (based on the quotes that I’ve been getting anyway). It is possible that this number will go down slightly although I’d be surprised if it got to half of that but you never know till you place the order. Shipping within the US will be via Priority Mail with delivery confirmation. I was stuck holding the bill after the Millett PCB group buy when several shipments went missing using regular first class mail. International shipping is TBD at this time. The region’s participants will share postage from the US to international destinations evenly. We are only taking orders from the US/Canada and Europe.
Now that we’re through all of that if you’d like to be a part of this group buy please both post in this thread the number of boards that you’d like to purchase and please me at natemaher@gmail.com with the following information:

1. Your user name on Headwize
2. Your full name and shipping address
3. Your paypal ID
4. The quantity of boards you wish to purchase (1 needed per amplifier)

This information will be treated with the strictest of confidence and will not be given, sold or provided otherwise to anyone at anytime. Also, if you do not receive a confirmation email within 72hs please resend the email in addition to sending me a private message here. DO NOT SEND A PM UNLESS YOU’VE ALREADY TRIED TO EMAIL ME AND WAITED 3 DAYS.

The ordering phase of the group buy will run until 12/18 at 11:59 pm. The order for the boards will be placed the following day as well as the first round of Paypal invoices being sent out. Paypal is the only accepted method of payment for this group buy. US/Canadian Residents will only receive one bill for their total including shipping. Int'l folks will get two bills, round one being the board fabrication costs + shipping to your hub (steinchen). Once we know how much shipping to each user will be another bill will be sent to cover those expenses. The group buy is being clipped by a week seeing that orders are coming in rather slowly now. It is likely that I will order some extras to cover anyone who misses out on the GB.

[b]Pricing update - I've recently received revised information from the board manufacturer. I now feel confident that the boards will be less than $3.50/ea and may go as low as $3 depending on what the final number is.

Thanks for looking,

Nate

[Edited by n_maher on 03-12-2006 at 12:25 PM.]

User Name / Boards / All Info In

n_maher / ??? /
Secret Squirrel / 4 / yes
AtomBoy / 2 / yes
sharshan / 2 / yes
98venom / 2 / yes
rreynol / 4 / yes
rubexcube / 10 / yes
qkizz / 2 / yes
stadams / 4 / yes
guzzler / 1 / yes
Armitage / 2 / yes
bdb / 4 / yes
Nisbeth / 4 / yes
Steinchen / 10 / yes
drewd / 20 / yes
bradjudy / 1 / yes
ScubaSteve87 / 2 / yes
ottopig / 4 / yes
04blumach / 2 / yes
rjkdivin / 4 / yes
cetoole / 4 / yes
motherone / 8 / yes
superdac / 8 / yes
matthewcarlrose / 4 / yes
Botch / 8 / yes
xikteny / 2 / yes
Clutz / 2 / yes
Viverr / 2 / yes
roibm / 2 / yes
eVITAERC / 2 / yes
alfiax / 2 / yes
Jeroen / 2 / yes
darkisz / 2 / yes
sagekoala / 2 / yes
amb / 2 / yes
nikongod / 5 / yes
audioray / 4 / yes
zip1385 / 2 / yes
Billyk / 2 / yes
Cedman / 5 / yes
lee35210 / 4 / no
klappar / 5 / yes
Blooze / 2 / yes
sbyers77 / 2 / yes
MASantos / 2 / yes
z2trillion / 2 / yes
shiroz / 2 / yes
buzzerbro / 3 / yes
jimf / 2 / yes
vixr / 2 / yes
dsavitsk / 3 / yes
saab / 4 / yes
kennylee / 6 / yes
Billyk / 2 / yes
Nospam / 4 / yes
BlueCan / 4 / yes
Magsy / 3 / yes
cobalta70 / 3 / yes
Girlsound / 8 / yes
jeffreyj900 / 4 / yes
cire / 2 / yes
endia / 4 / yes
jar / 4 / yes

Current Total = 220ish

At this point we're over 200 boards which means the boards will not cost any more than $3.00/ea

[Edited by n_maher on 12-19-2005 at 09:29 AM.]

(Been looking forward to this since I built my Millet)

Thanks.
Sharshan

Thanks,

-Todd

Thanks guys!

/U.

Sending Email out with the info....

Four boards please

Robert

Greetings

Pieter Vink