Trafomatic Experience Head One

Demo unit with less than 20 hours.  Also makes a great tubed linestage.

Trafomatic Experience Head One wins Blue Moon Award- Trafomatic's Sasa Cokic elected to call this line of electronics 'Experience'.  We believe the 'experience' he's referring to relates to long nights experimenting with various windings and magnetic elements to make his output transformers.  In the world of winding iron, there are few in this select group.  Having had our experience with Sasa's other designs, we knew to prepare ourselves for something special.  With selectable impedances to match any number of different headphones, this headphone amps simple appearance belies its tremendous sound and functionality.  The 6S45P triode becomes the perfect transducer to mate to his iron.  It maintains the depth and mid-range of tubes without the euphonics that often hinder them on the highs and lows.  In fact, blindfolded you may not know this is a tube design, which is our favorite implementation of tubes...it just sounds right.  It also doubles as an excellent 2 input pre-amp, with a sub output...really don't miss using this as a preamp if you have any excuse to do so, she's a beaut.  (Speaking of beauty, the woodwork on these was done by Hans Frick and Team in Austria, they're gorgeous and available in 3 veneers) As Srajan Ebaen of 6Moons confirms,

"the Head One excelled. It contributed far more than it gently diminished. While the overall gestalt did mellow, the modest fill action was super benign and above all, linear. It didn't focus around the midrange waist in love handles but applied itself evenly top to bottom like an atomized drop of oil.  The impression of inner pressurization or color intensity increased and dynamics didn't suffer. While ultimate see-thru-ness did congeal a tad, the dimensionality of virtual bodies focused better. Particularly at low volumes, this added fleshiness was not only attractive but more intelligible. I particularly appreciated how this did not muck up the crystalline yet suave treble I so admire with the 45s. It's here where you expect the greatest losses from additive meddling but this unprepossessing small preamp acquitted itself very well indeed."

This just prior to winning the Blue Moon Award:

"As a headphone amplifier, the Head One is in a class by itself. More linear than the midrange-centric WE 408A Yamamoto which by comparison is clearly sculpted; faster than it and the mighty 300B Woo; texturally and harmonically richer than the transistors of the ALO Audio, KingRex and Red Wine Audio pieces; this Serbian makes a most compelling case to go tubes for low-level circuits."

This from Sasa:

PRINCIPLE:
Different from OTL solutions, the perfect matching of impedances for different types of headphones is achieved using different taps on our output transformer's secondary winding.  This achieves signal entirety regardless of the output that best matches your headphones.  This what  sets our design apart more than any other factor, (not just matching the impedance but the way it's done) .  These are the guiding principles of our Experience series, high quality power supplies with low induction toroidal transformers, tube rectified, double L-C filtered for anode voltage and a top quality double C-core output transformer implemented with extreme care.

Specifications:
Tubes: 2x 6S45P , 1x EZ80(81)

Power supply: 230VAC (option 115VAC) , 50/60Hz - 50VA
Consumption: 30VA 
Output impedance: 30 -100 – 300ohms 
Maximum output power: 300mW 
THD at 100mW/1kHz: 3 % 
Additional outputs: line out i sub out 
Inputs: CD , AUX 
Input sensitivity: 1Veff 
Input resistance: 47Kohm 
Output line voltage: 
THD 1% - 3.2V 
THD 2% - 6.4V
THD 2.8% - 9V 
Frequency bandwidth: 
headphone and line out 20Hz(-3dB) – 57KHz(-3dB)
Subwoofer out 20Hz(-3db) – 18KHz(-3dB) S/N: 71dB 
Minimum load resistance on “LINE and “SUB”: 
- 2k ohm both outputs simultaneously; 
- 1k ohm single output. 
Gain on “LINE” output: 18dB