I hope to build several variants on this and would be happy to
work with anyone here who is doing likewise. We can each make
half the mistakes that way.

Skip Pack

The amp I'm talking about is at the following
URL.

http://www.passdiy.com/pdf/ZV8_power_jfet.pdf

He is also selling the Firstwatt F3, which
I understand is a much fancier implementation.
This ZV8 (the one in the Audioexpress article) is
so much like a tube amp that it would be easy to
explore lots of configurations that I can understand
because I have been paying more attention to tube
basics.

Skip

At the Lonestar Bottlehead's meeting a week ago, I
listened to my gainclone followed by Wardsweb's Sex
amp. I thought the sex amp was the better amp up to
volumes louder that I ever listen at. It wasn't
radically better, but clearly better. I tend to
think that well done tube amps are usually better
than SS, but that SS is catching up. As you know,
you could easily put together a good gainclone for
$150, including an attractive chassis/box. Mine
is a standard version 1.0, single transformer from
Brian Bell. I think I can put together a much better
gainclone with Carlos Felipe's snubberized supply
and seperate powersupplies.

I suspect that the Jfet amps could be very good. Hope
to see/hear if that's true.

Skip

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71633&perpage=10&pagenumber=1

The rest of the items are very much off the shelf, junkbox
to boutique. The only difficult thing would appear to be
heatsinking the less common package of the JFET.

Discussion of the JFET amp

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64292

This thing intrigues me because it looks like you could easily
choke load it (if you could find the high-current choke), or
use two modules in push-pull. Maybe even feed two modules with
a center-tap-primary transformer just like a PP tube amp. It
all seems approachable if you're willing to stand way back
when you power it up in the middle of your back yard.

Skip