Zenductor II BAF Edition
- Description
This is the famous Zenductor II created by Nelson Pass and Mike Rothacher for the BAF 2024 Build Camp.
This is a limited edition offering. Once they are gone, they won't be seen again.
The kits include everything to build two monoblocks down to the last nuts and bolts and the power supplies. The photo is one channel; one monoblock. The kit is designed to be assembled by novice DIYers in one afternoon.
Details
The Zenductor II is a more powerful and advanced version of the Zenductor. The original delivered about 3 watts at 3% distortion into 8 ohms. The Zenductor II is good up to 10 watts at about 1% in addition to having a much higher damping factor. This is all achieved without negative feedback.
They sound fabulous.
Please read Nelson's articles to get all the important information. Link to Nelson Pass Zenductor II Article
For an overview of the build process, please see the Zenductor II Thread at diyAudio.com. Since BAF '24, we've added a base for stability, and we've changed the binding posts and their orientation.
Important Information
This is an open chassis project. The heatsinks reach temperatures approaching 70C, 160F for a typical build. If you have children, pets, anyone, or any thing that could be injured, scared, or damaged by these temperatures, please adjust the bias current to a level suitable for your environment and/or increase the heatsinking. They should be operated in an area with at least 8" of ventilation on all sides. Do not operate them in a fully closed rack.
Customer Reviews
The Zenductor II BAF Edition kit is a straightforward build, with nothing trickier than lining up the 8 small JFETs so they look neat. It is an easier build than the ACA Mini due to more room on the PCB. I deviated from a standard build only in foregoing the on-board banana connectors, instead directly soldering banana pigtails to the speaker-out pads.
Biasing the Zenductor is particularly easy with only one pot per channel to adjust, a much much simpler procedure than biasing the ACA Mini or F5m. The heatsinks do run quite hot (mine are running 53-54°C above ambient, with a bias of 1.34A), but my limited experience so far indicates that bias is not as sensitive to ambient T changes as other Pass small DIY amps. The sound of the Zenductor is to die for (read the comments over on DIYAudio). I have no problem driving ca. 89dB speakers in smaller rooms (12’x14’). Just keep in mind that due to its limited gain, it will likely require more crank on the volume control of your source than most other amps. For that reason, pairing it with a passive preamp would benefit from higher sensitivity speakers.
Nelson Pass and the folks at DiyAudioStore have hit their biggest home run yet in the pair of mono-block amplifiers. The Zenductor 2.2 is bar far the best DIY project I have embarked on. The build instructions, while slightly carried from the kit I purchased, were by far the most comprehensive yet. Between the guide and the forum I was able to find and parse all of the information needed. I was able to come home from work, find these in a box in my porch and go from there to warming the heat syncs in one evening with a perfect build the first try. Oh, and did I mention, they sound amazing! Truly the best sounding amps I have owned and very nearly the least expensive. Now if I could just get someone to develop a chassis these could drop into that looks like the Aleph 0, I would be all in. These amps would certainly benefit from the additional aluminum. I would also jump at the opportunity to buy one more mono-block kit, to have one powering my center fill. Absolutely astounding work from these designated hitters. A+
Really love these amps with the naked look, the ease of build, and the balanced sound.
These are very musical amps that run my 6 ohm 97 db Volti speakers with ease. I also built a pair for a friend and he loves them on his Zu Omen speakers.
The build is the easiest I’ve encountered only taking an hour and a half.
