I wondered if Cooter was going to turn pro and HeadRoom's Tyll Hertsens laughed. "Why would he? He probably already has a job—and now he has a great amp. Who needs the headaches?"
That brings us to the other component to a Head-Fest: the manufacturers. While the head-Fiers themselves are the center of a meet, manufacturers participate with support and demonstrations. Many of them came from the ranks of the Head-Fi movement, such as HeadAmp's Justin Wilson. Wilson, who says that 80% of his sales are generated directly from buzz created on Head-Fi, was showing his new portable amp, the AE-2, which was built like a tank and was chock full of interesting features. The power switch is a slider, minimizing the possibility that it will be switched on accidentally in your pockets, the gain switch is recessed, and it sports both a 3.5mm mini plug and robust RCA jacks. It was dead silent and seemed capable of driving anything this side of a dead short.
Pete Millet also came out of the DIY movement, where he is almost revered for his generosity, with his time, expertise, and intellectual property. He's a sharer. Together with Todd the Vinyl Junkie, Millet is now marketing the $459 TTVJ Millet Portable Hybrid—the world's first battery-powered tube headphone amplifier. The Millet Hybrid uses a tube gain stage, followed by a solid-state buffer. The subminiature vacuum tubes were designed for pre-transistor hearing aids and portable radios and draw around 15 milliwatts of power each, enabling the Millet Hybrid to run for up to 40 hours off its lithium-ion battery. It's a beaut.
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