Bottlehead Legacy Project
About the Project
Bottlehead began in 1995 under the ownership of Dan and Eileen Schmalle. In 2025, the company was purchased by Middle-Aged Kids Engineering (MAKE) - a family-owned company of DIY enthusiasts committed to continuing Bottlehead’s legacy.
MAKE has decided, with the cooperation and encouragement of Dan, Eileen, Paul Joppa, and Paul Birkeland, to provide manuals for select legacy kits to the DIY community under a Creative Commons license. We may add more as time goes on.
We take great pride in our excellent customer service, but we have limited ability to support legacy kits. Support for new projects built from these manuals is limited to general advice via the legacy section of the Bottlehead Forum.
License
Bottlehead has licensed Legacy Project manuals under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form and for noncommercial purposes only.
A Note about Parts Availability
Over time, Bottlehead’s inventory has evolved to reflect its current product lineup. We are unable to supply parts for products in the Bottlehead Legacy Project, and some parts listed in the manuals may no longer be in production.
Product Timeline
1998
Paraglow 2A3 Monoblocks
The Paraglow kit was developed with the
intention of producing the best sounding 2A3 amplifier ever produced. The result were 2.4 watt direct coupled single-ended monoblock amplifiers with parallel feed output stage, based on the classic 2A3 triode tube.
2000
Foreplay Preamplifier
The Foreplay kit was developed to complement the tonal qualities and appearance of the Electronic Tonalities amplifier kits. Foreplay was a stereo line preamplifier with three switchable inputs and cathode follower outputs.
2006
Single-Ended Experimenter's Kit (SEX) 2.1
The SEX kit was developed as an affordable way to experience the magical sound of single-ended triode amplifiers. It used 6DN7 tubes to create a two-stage parallel feed single-ended stereo integrated amplifier. The output was via a parafeed autoformer.
Although the original SEX is retired, its legacy lives on in our SEX 4 amplifier.
2009
Quickie Battery Powered Preamp
Quickie was developed as a very simple and very safe first kit for someone wanting to learn about DIY tube audio.
In spite of its low cost the preamp was quite capable of performing well in high end audio systems.
2014
Quicksand Battery Powered Amplifier
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Bottlehead's beginnings
Bottlehead was born out of the Pacific Northwest's DIY audio community in the mid-1990s. VALVE Magazine served as a place for builders to share their ideas and eventually launched iconic Bottlehead amps like the Single Ended eXperimentation Kit.
We're pleased to offer the (unfortunately incomplete) archives that we were able to grab.
One quick note, cribbed from Doc B himself in the original archive's forum post: There is not even the slightest hint of a suggestion of tech support for the material covered in these articles. This material is here for historical purposes only and we take no responsibility for what may be myriad technical errors - including my own. I was learning back then, just like you guys. It is unlikely that I will be able to spend much time answering questions so I will suggest that the Bottlehead forums may be used for discussion of the various articles amongst the participants.
Collection by Year
