Crack questions

[jrebman]

Viktor,

Sounds again like a flakey tube socket connection and/or ttube, and that it's making a better connection as things heat up and expand abit..

Sounds like the rest of the amp is doing what it should though, so the tubes and sockets are where I'd be looking for an answer.

-- Jim

 

[Viktor]

Okay I've had a alot of other things to do so I haven't had time to look into the issue and actually it went away completely but now its back again. I've checked the solders and they looked fine and I also resoldered some of the connections but it doesn't seem to help. I also tried the chop-stick test but the cracking/popping noises are very irregular so it's hard to know if there's anything happening when I poke around...

I tried to 'clean' some of the pins on the large tube to get a better connection but that didn't help either...

edit:
Okay I found out that when I wiggle the big tube I can make the cracking noise appear/disappear but when I poke the connections there's I can't produce the noise...

 

[Grainger49]

Try inserting and removing the big tube 5 or 6 times.  This will clean the tube pins and the tube socket.

 

[hopeful]

Just thought I'd throw this out there as well - do you happen to have a cordless phone, cell phone, router, etc. sitting near your amp?  While I haven't had this issue with the amperex 12au7 in my crack, I have a pair of fairly pricey amperex e88cc PQ's (another 9pin variant that I used in my prior Woo headphone amp) that pop/crackle off and on if they are within several feet of any sort of radio.  Took me a week or so to puzzle out the cause of those crackles, and I just wanted to make sure your issue doesn't boil down to something so simple.