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WELCOME TO THE MUSEUM
OF S O N O C U S
​Welcome, welcome. The price of admission is your curiosity.
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Here you will find my past projects that showcases the philosophy and the DNA of S O N O C U S , which is the strive for value, minimalism, performance, and therefore utmost satisfaction.
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Over 300 of the machines you see below have been hand built by me in the period of last seven years, all exclusively sold in Korea.
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The last of these machines (Beautiful Monster series) were the direct ancestors of current S O N O C U S lineup and their success is the very drive behind the founding of S O N O C U S and its flagship preamp, 526.
LITTLE GENERAL AMPLIFIER
Composite IC chip amp created by Linuxguru. Meager 20w into 8ohm but its very clean very dynamic power.
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For quiet listening environment of many korean households, this was the bee's knee's.
circa 2013~ 2016
CUSTOM DACS
circa 2013~ 2014
NOS DACs made with aesthetics as intent.
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Mostly featured TDA1543 and 1387 chips and impossible to acquire high end and industrial components gutted from expensive machines and a Tenor USB decoder chip, before the advent of XMOS. Some of the featured components were Jensen trafos, copper foil bypass caps, current sensing shunt regs (for a 40year old chip!).
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The sound of these DACs were like that of a nice sounding tubed radio.
TIGER PREAMP
circa 2019~2020
First project of mine that led me to expanding my learning in circuit design and layout
techniques, which has now become a primary focus of every machine at S O N O C U S .
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Tiger preamp was composite mosfet design, low gain high bias, or what is also called muscle preamp.
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The success of this preamp was a precious help to me through the pandemic and was the inspiration and drive behind the creation of Beautiful Monster Preamp.
BEAUTIFUL MONSTER PREAMP
circa 2020~2023
Modular dual mono solid state preamp.
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Many of the layout feature that were implemented for Beautiful Monster are now found in every S O N O C U S linestages.
​Beaumon was a small commercial success, selling over 100 units in Korea alone, of which were all hand built by me for the next 3 years of Beaumon's production life.
the best ideas and implementations that were tried for countless versions of Beautiful Monster eventually finds its way into S O N O C U S 526 , which makes 526 not only a brainchild of Beaumon but also a linestage that has undergone over 3 years of long and fruitful maturity cycle.