Voltron

Horace Silver Quintet -- Silver's Serenade Hey, HowdyDoody, this one was recorded when I was 6 weeks old.

I actually said you achieved failure, not that you were a failure, but thanks for reinforcing my initial impression of you with your whiny response to me. Again, I gave you points in my book for making your first post in the Listening thread, but if you and your thin skin do stick around, post stupid pictures that you think are weird ass and edgy in the Slow Forum thread, not here. Now playing for this judgmental would-be adolescent: Horace Silver Quintet -- Finger Poppin'

Failure achieved in 2 posts. Congrats. Oh, and I thought your 1st post was fine, if not trying a little too hard. As for me: Christian McBride & Inside Straight -- Kind of Brown

I think Antonio was saying you built his B22 although I don't know if that is true either.

Various artists (Belle & Sebastian related) -- God Help the Girl Amazon: "After the success of the most recent Belle And Sebastian album, "The Life Pursuit", band leader/singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch decided to pursue his dream of writing a rock musical scored for female singers. After auditioning vocalists via Internet contests, he made his choices and, with all members of Belle And Sebastian backing him up, recorded this breathtaking record. It combines the strengths and feel of early Belle And Sebastian records in a broader musical palette, which draws equally on musicals, 60s girl groups, 80s indie, and most of all, classic pop."

Have a good one Julian. Are you still thinking about making it up north for the August 8 meet? If so, I'll buy you a beer. Cheers!

Thanks for the thought, Rob, but the spark happened in a different set of rectifiers than the ones in the PS when the gas tube popped. I have used those rectifiers before, and would find it hard to believe that I had one problem in the PS and then had an unrelated bad tube exhibit that behavior. I was not in Mayberry last night so I did not have a chance to do further investigation or take any more pics. So, you think there is a FET on the back of the larger PCB on the side wall and the one screwed into the bottom is the diode? I can get numbers, etc, tonight I hope. Thanks.

I didn't know there still was a Videogon. That's actually the first place I even bought used a/v gear.

I will take a look Birgir, because the original problem with the former incarnation was that the umbilicals had a problem and the amp would power up once and then not the next time.

That's the bitch of it, ain't it?

Here is a pic of the amp section and I will see if there are others. If Asr reads this and has more pics, I would appreciate them being posted.

Mikhail thought the 6BL7s were the best output tubes for this amp. I rarely used others, so there you go. So the FET is actually that thing screwed into the bottom plate?! It is 4 wires to my recollection, but I will see if that is correct tonight. There are some other similar components screwed to the chassis near the heater supply and over by the other pcb (I think). You want the numbers if I can read them later?

Tube complement on the amp is a variety of mix-n-match options: Gain tubes include 6sn7, 2c51, 5965, E88CC/01, 6922 Output tubes include 6sn7, 6bl7GT, 5687, 12az7, 12av7, 5670 I used all 6sn7s sometimes, 6sn7s with 6bl7s, and most often or all 2c51s with 6bl7s.

Yeah, I couldn't get a great shot of it, but that trafo is in meltdown. There are two windings (maybe?) and they are sliding out to the side in different amounts.

I finally said fuckit and unscrewed all the tube sockets, unglued the bundle of four caps and unscrewed a small binding post (or whatever it is called and popped the top off all the way. Here is the dog's breakfast in all its glory: I also created a flickr page with all the photos I took, most of which suck. Hopefully, this will give people who know something an idea of what is going on. I can confirm there is not anything I recognize as a FET or any other kind of semiconductor chip. SDS-XLR PSU Photostream Other than photography criticism, what do you think?

Kilt Fatigue requires moar gin! Congratulations on your fine scholastic achievement Doug! And further congratulations on extending your schooling indefinitely!

You were speaking per side and I was adding them. I ran 2 OA3 per side (for a total of 4). Thought of that as 300 volts, but it is indeed 150 volts per side.

Deer Tick -- Born on Flag Day

Now: Bat For Lashes -- Pearl's Dream (remixes) Before: Tift Merritt -- Buckingham Solo Regina Spektor -- Far

I most often ran 4 gas tubes, so 300 volts. Is there any way that only one wire should be attached to one of the umbilicals? I will check again, but I am pretty sure that there was only one wire on one side. I would be more than happy to start over with a new PS in that box if what is in there is really compromised. I also would never expect somebody who helped me out to own the repairs for life.

The top would only unsolder with all 8 tube sockets and those four bundled caps unsoldered. The only components on the top are those four caps that I can recall/see so far. I will work on it tonight, but who knows how to get this thing apart without fucking it up more. The back has two Neutrik connectors for the umbilicals. It would seem that one of them has a single blue wire connected to it. I don't recall how many wires go to the other neutrik. There are at least three wires twisted together coming out of the power transformer that have some heatshrink on the end, and there is one other wire with some crimped heatshrink on the end. Who the hell knows what is going on in there....

I wanted to respond to the bolded text because only one regulator tube popped on Sunday and that was the first and last time. The amp turned on and the first two regulators ignited and then I switched to four. The glow was much brighter in the front two than when the front four ignited, and the filament or whatever that you can see on the top of the rectifiers was much less bright on the rectifier in the middle of the amp (don't know which channel that is). The sound was not good upon startup, which is why I let it sit and turned on the speakers. While sitting there, I heard the pop and then turned everything off. If I recall correctly, I turned it all off and unplugged the headphones. I think I tried to turn it back on with everything the same, and the rectifiers lit, the amp lit, and then the regulators wouldn't do anything. There was no music playing either. If memory serves, if the switch was on but the tubes did not ignite, you could still hear music but I am not certain of that. Then I replaced the rectifiers with 5R4GYBs and replaced the front 4 regulators because the back ones had never been on. I tried starting up and I had K701s plugged in (more expendable) and there was no ignition and no sound. It did not pop the regulator at all, but there was a spark/arc in the rectifier so I shut it down. None of those tubes were popper, but the LED did light so power should have gone to them. One question I have is what are the four capacitors strapped to the top plate? They are in the last pic above. OK, all of that said, Kevin, are you willing to work on this thing? Do you want to build a new one in that box for me? If not, do you think you could readily direct someone how to do it, including the ignition circuit you added in? I appreciate your thoughts on this already, but I am thinking that the best solution is to rebuild it but I still don't know how to find the problem. I would love some advice, as I said above, regarding opening this thing up better. The tube sockets are wired to the top, in addition to the bundle of capacitors so you can only pull that up so far. The bottom has all the trafos and stuff connected to it, so it is unclear to me how to separate that.

That is a total drag, JP, and I hope you can fix it. I do want to note for the record that JP's Mini was at no time in the Sprinter and this failure cannot be blamed on VanJam.

First of all, thanks Kevin for diving into this and trying to help figure it out. More than two of the regulators regularly failed to fire without assistance (from a flash camera usually), and there was no way to get six to ignite without a major halogen light source. Mikhail always said he could build a separate PS just to fire all six. Also, he said he "forgot" to put in a drain (or similar term) so the light on the plates switch would stay on after shutdown for 30 minutes or more. I would be happy to try the bottom plate, but was not sure on the method. The transformers and other stuff are all bolted to it and I cannot tell how much play there is in the wires. I'd be happy for some advice on how to do this because I could not see much of the PMOD board on the side wall. Not sure what to do from here, but maybe tonight I will have a camera and will try the bottom plate.

I heard one at Macworld and was amazed at the amount of amplification and the decent sound it produced. Great little item.