Description

The WHAMMY Class-A headphone amplifier

Wayne Colburn, the genius at Pass Labs who for the last 25 years has designed essentially all the things that aren't speaker amplifiers, wanted to make a fun, high-performance, fantastic-sounding, Class-A, DIY headphone amp for this community. We call it:

Wayne's Headphone Amp Must Make Yourself

Yes, it's a silly name. But it's cute. And it explains a lot about it. So it stuck. 

Given the explosion in the popularity of headphones, as well as the unbelievable amount of choice and variety in the market, it seemed that a simple and great-sounding headphone amp would be a great addition to the DIY community. 

Because there are so many choices of headphones, from Planars to IEM's, high impedance or low, this amp will drive any headphone you want to throw at it (Well, not electrostatic headphones directly, no amp like this will, but it will happily drive a step-up transformer like Stax).

Wayne wanted a universal headphone amp for his desk. This is the fruit of that idea. It’s made to be made in an afternoon or an evening and it has no builder adjustments, so it’s going to have a high likelihood of success and completion for beginners and experienced DIYers. 

It's an all in one PCB, just wire the AC & fuse, input and output jacks. Add a selector switch if you like.

Class-A output stage with enough current to drive anything. It also makes a wonderful line stage with about 14db of gain.

Your choice - PCB or PCB plus parts kit

We are now selling both the a WHAMMY PCB by itself, as well as a parts kit that includes the PCB, and everything else you need to build the WHAMMY other than a chassis.

• We are working on a chassis for the future and will definitely release one, but we aren't going to rush it
• 6L6 has done a great WHAMMY build guide and the supplied parts will match the build guide, more or less
• We have now seen multiple successful builds of this new kit, and are now opening pre-orders for the kit, shipping January 11th 2019

PCB Details

• 218mm x 60mm (8 5/8" x 6 5/16") 
• Black with gold immersion traces
• 70oz Copper

Kit Details

The kit includes everything to make the amp except the PCB and chassis. All components are of the highest quality.

• Dale RN55 milspec resistors
• Panasonic FC & FR series capacitors
• Elna SILMIC II capacitors
• Solid aluminum anodized volume knob
• Alps "Blue Velvet" potentiometer
• Neutrik RCA connectors
• Schurter filtered power entry module with spare fuse
• TRS Headphone Jack
• IRF610/9610 Power MOSFETs
• Texas Instruments RC4580 op amp
• Teflon insulated silver plated copper milspec wire for I/O connections
• Silver bearing eutectic Kester 44 solder for I/O connections
• All nuts, bolts and standoffs to attach external connectors and the PCB to a chassis

Illustrated build guide

Most of the info you need to complete this project can be found in the first 6 posts this thread, a well-illustrated guide showing how everything goes together.

• Step by step WHAMMY build guide on guides.diyaudio.com
• WHAMMY build guide and general discussion thread

Video 

Here's a video of Wayne talking about the Whammy at Burning Amplifier Festival 2017 -- Wayne Colburn at BAF '17