kevin gilmore

That is up to neil. But if you ask him real nice i'm absolutely sure he will send them to you... Major fail with capacitors just hanging there from stickem cable ties that long since let loose... Send the amp to me... But really you will never get it back...

I wonder what would happen if you went to jack at woo audio and told him you wanted him to build an extreme his way. It sure would be pretty and it would work forever. Offer to supply the schematic and have him make the necessary changes to make it reliable. He already knows how to do dc filament supplies, and high voltage supplies for that kind of thing, should be easy.

I would really need high resolution pictures of the amp pointed to the neutrik connectors from a couple of different angles to determine which wire is which. As far as i can tell, 2 of the 5 wires total are filament, one is ground, one is front end B+ and the other is output tube B+ A simple harness to the heathkit is all that would be necessary. Ironbut should clearly be able to figure out which wire is which and to make up a fast harness. There is literally thousands of really outstanding surplus power supplies out there. The heathkit is nice because it has both supplies that you need. But anything that meets the following specs should work. something that makes 6.3 VDC or 6.3 VAC at up to 10 amps. something that makes around 150 VDC at about 150ma. (best guess at total high voltage current) So anything in the 0 to 300 volt range with 250ma or more is perfect. Certainly not as pretty as your current supply. But will likely give you 20 years of trouble free power. The black gate output caps are your limiting factor given the WCF design, so absolutely no more than 350 volts max. Now as to how to fix that current mess and still have the gas tubes light is another story entirely. Unless you want the gas tubes to be a night light but otherwise electrically not part of the circuit. Mikhail was all about show anyway. Not the least of which is that unproperly filtered gas tubes are noisy anyway. Filament transformer will have to be replaced at some point in the future anyway. Neil found someone good to fix his amp (although its going to be expensive, lots of man hours of work there) maybe you can contact that guy and show him my current best guess on the power supply schematic and then show him pictures of the thing. If he doesn't run away screaming, you might be able to get him to fix the thing, at least temporarily. I've been playing with a few different ideas using the transformers and other parts in there i can salvage. Currently i don't like what i've come up with. Its kind of stupid if what you thought you were getting really was an all tube power supply. Lots of solid state all over that thing, none of the caps across the diodes needed to shut them up... There is another version of this power supply out there that actually has 6l6 pass tubes, that would be a better idea, but now we are talking about more holes in the top chassis, no reasonable way to wire the mess...

The rules on surplus stuff i send to people is that i never ever want it back. Not a lot of room left in that sds supply to add a bigger transformer. OH hell, just tie the wires in, and cram it in there somewhere. Use hammer to make sure it fits.

There is absolutely no reason to touch the amplifier chassis in any way. Replace the power supply chassis with a couple of power supplies in the meantime while you decide the ultimate fate of the old power supply. Won't change the sound in the slightest. You can go back to the old supply later. Or just change out the fet and diode and use it till the filament transformer finally burns up completely.

OK, perfect for the filaments LAMBDA LQ-530 0-10V, 0-14A DIGITAL DC POWER SUPPLY - eBay (item 320264048971 end time Jul-10-09 19:32:45 PDT) Great for the high voltage. Still overkill. I have more than a dozen of these, various voltages and currents. They can't be killed. SORENSEN [email protected] REGULATED VARIABLE DC POWER SUPPLY:eBay Motors (item 350188032602 end time Jul-06-09 12:50:09 PDT)

OK, this is a joke. Well it's not a joke, but if you buy this i will have to fly out there and take it away from you before you hurt yourself. But really this beast plus a large filament supply and you can run the world. HP 6479C 0-300 Volt, 0-35 Amp, 11KW, DC Power Supply - eBay (item 150353372151 end time Jun-30-09 12:37:17 PDT) Zero to 300 volts... absolutely perfect Zero to 35 amperes... A little bit of overkill 208 3 phase with neutral and ground absolutely required. Your electric company will love you. Trying to find a perfect and reasonable match for a pair of power supplies now.

Oops then he really is making 1100 volts with 900 and 700 volt parts. The green/yellow is the center tap and is clearly not connected, so the 2 greens go directly to the diode bridge. OK, so here is what i would do NOW. Go on ebay and look for a heathkit IP17. These things are workhorse units which got me thru a number of years at zenith in the plasma panel research department. Very hard to kill. And tubes! Its a slight bit light on the filament current, but i pushed one to 6 amps regularly. Completely adjustable. Here is a brand new one which is way overpriced NIB HEATHKIT 400VDC POWER SUPPLY 4 TUBE AUDIO AMPLIFIER - eBay (item 270406989290 end time Jul-11-09 10:00:21 PDT) here is one that is beat to shit for a lot cheaper. Heathkit Ip-17 Tube 6L6 H.V. Power Supply ip17 Buy Now - eBay (item 390060230006 end time Jul-18-09 17:59:25 PDT) buy some new neutrik connectors, and wire the thing up to the amp chassis. DONE... Then decide what you are going to do with the boat anchor.

I'm now wondering if mikhail did not do a reverse of what he did on that extreme. Wire the one transformer as a 220 vac input and run it on 110 vac. That way the output would be down to 400 vac, about 560 vdc into the caps... Very hard to see how the primaries are wired. If he did this, then it would be no wonder that the tubes don't light all the time. As you need about 2.7 times the starting voltage to get the tubes to kick in. So 3 tubes would need about 600 volts to start.

It will have a very different sound signature however. Some would probably like that even more. Mikhail did build a couple of balanced platinum extremes and found a way to shove them into a supra chassis... Bet those are going to be real fun to fix when they go boom. You would need about 16 real amperes of filament juice to light one of those up. Plus about 75 watts of high voltage.

RE: pics Unless there was a significant amount of drugs involved (like gallons of booze) there is no way in hell the same person built both parts of the amplifier. That or mikhail has multiple personalities.

current best guess updated after becoming one with the pictures Scared to hell i am... unplug umbilical to amp, leave gas tubes out of the socket, and accidentally turn it on. More than 1kv with enough energy to throw you across the room sitting on those gas tube sockets... I still think that is a 6m... not an 8m... Doesn't matter.

current best guess http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/sdsgasps.jpg getting pretty close... there have to be a few hidden diodes... for the ignition circuit to work.

the diode bridge sure looks like gbu6m (fairchild) and is rated for 1000 volts... Trouble is it is running at 1100 volts...

Lets start with the pass fet. It is under rated for at least 50 volts. Likely it and the diode feeding it are toast. There is only one fet right?? here is a much better part that i have not been able to kill yet with extreme abuse. http://ixdev.ixys.com/DataSheet/DS99843B(IXFH-T20N100P).pdf Direct replacement. I'm worried about the diode bridge attached to the center of the chassis also not being rated for voltage. Hard to figure out the part number with the chassis nut in the middle, but will try and find it. Back shot of the circuit board would be VERY HELPFUL. Was that fet even bolted to the chassis, and was there any thermal grease?? Because at the power that was running at... If you have trouble uploading the pictures email them to me and i will put them where everyone can see them.

Just think how much the insurance companies that were insuring that 3 year tour will be shelling out on this. And the millions of pounds of ticket sales in the UK... He really was extremely talented. Too bad the head was so fucked up.

I want really good pictures of the insides of the amp. Reason is i want to see how the high voltage is wired. Need to know how it is split. Absolutely there is A FET on the back of the large PCB. You are going to need to flip out that side of the chassis. And take some straight on pictures of that board, and underneith it. Please get a better camera Like a Nikon D3X... Better yet, the new mamiya with the 32mp back...

That is a different kind of thing as the board in the cd player is dc coupled. But i'm now thinking that a quick (quick??) replacement of the FET and the diode that feeds it might get you running again pretty quick, and once you take it apart enough to figure out what the part number of the fet is, someone local could probably fix it pretty fast.

Just saw pictures of neil's amp. Pretty pissed at the moment. Which leads to the following politically incorrect comment... (with a russian accent) "IT MUST BE BUILT LIKE SHIT TO SOUND GOOD" The amount of total clusterfuck here is awsome.

I like the display!! got all the parts from marc. Now i got no time... As i'm doing lots of Singlepower Midwest support

And now we know why the filament transformer looks a bit crispy. Some of those tube combo's especially 6bl7's as the output tubes gets the filament current in the 6.6 to 7.5 ampere range.

Yep the 2 x 5u4's are in parallel and the second transformer does nothing except make 1100 volts likely used as the gas tube starting voltage. and there really is only one fet... so the left channel, right channel seperated power supplies is pure gold plated texas cow dung.

Well the power supply is 2 x 5u4 and 6 x gas tubes plus 3 transformers and a pile of extra shit. The amp is balanced and is therefore 6 tubes, the usual mikhail plug in anything you want with adapters, but standard is 6 x 6sn7. 1 dual triode gain tube per channel, 2 dual triode output tubes per channel in WCF. So in picture dscn2645 is the semiconductor mounted to the chassis 4 wires or 3 wires... Sure looks like 4 wires, and therefore a diode bridge, tied to the second transformer, which makes it interesting because it sure looks like the 2 x 5u4's are actually in parallel which also makes absolutely no sense...

Build one! Schematics available.

Shame on you nate... Go and look at the schematic i posted on this. The filament windings on the 5u4's are firstly 5 volts, and second, they are lifted up by about 500 volts. Those filament windings are part of the 278x transformers. One transformer per 5u4. OK, so voltron, you got the thing apart, lets go a little further, take the screws that hold the posts on, and tilt out the main circuit board, leaving it attached to the aluminum and take straight on pictures, and pictures under the board... What i'm now thinking is that mikhail lied about how the thing works... (no never would he do such a thing.) There may in fact be only one fet. So one of the gas tube strings is used as is without a buffer and just runs the 2 input tubes. and the other gas tube string is used with the fet buffer and runs the 4 x WCF tubes... So the 2 x neutrik power connectors are according to the pdf used to seperate things for maximum stereo imaging ?? Yeah that's it...