The Starving Student Millett Hybrid, or Starving Student, or SSMH for short, is a vacuum tube and discrete solid state hybrid headphone amplifier.

For most people, the construction of the SSMH will start with the printed circuit board (PCB). After populating the board with specific electronic parts and powering with the VoIP wall power adapter, the SSMH will provide excellent audiophile quality amplification for headphone listening enjoyment.

DIYforums.org has more than enough information to help you complete the Starving Student . Besides these web pages, the forum itself provides ample opportunity to search for answers or for asking direct questions. Team SSMH will do their best to get your problem solved. In addition, there are many other builders that post and answer questions at: Head-Fi and Headwize. Head-Fi, in particular, has the original thread first posted by Pete Millett here. We hope you enjoy building and listening to the Starving Student Millett Hybrid headphone amplifier!

Note on sources for the SSMH ...
To those of you contemplating sources to use with the Starving Student, be advised when attempting to use the Alien DAC or the BantamDAC. There is a unique charge effect that may potentially develop on the RCA jacks of the Starving Student - PCB version or point-to-point. This may happen if a signal is present while the Starving Student is powered up and the signal is disconnected. Or, it may occur when the Starving Student is powered up by itself but not connected to a source. The resulting discharge when attempting to connect an Alien or Bantam DAC may fry the output of the DAC chip. Please note that this phenomenon is unique to the Starving Student and has not been known to occur with any other amplifier. Neither has it ever been reported that other sources have had issues with the Starving Student.