Hi folks,
First of all, let me say how much I love the Bottlehead kits. I built a Seduction + C4S last year and have been loving it! I've built numerous electronics projects over the past couple of years, so I'm not a complete newbie when it comes to this sort of stuff. I guess I've been getting cocky and made a few mistakes with my current Crack build. Let me try and break it down for you:
1. The first issue I had, and I think I've fixed, is that one of my 2.49k resistors on the headphone out burned out. Based on other forum posts, I traced the path back to the output coupling caps and I had put one in backwards. They are toast now and have replacements on the way.
I replaced the 2.49k resistors with 1/4W 3.0k resistors. Is that okay?
2. I am not sure if this is a problem or not, but I was getting a couple funky voltage readings during testing. I was testing a few things for continuity (using my DMMs continuity tester) to try and find the problem, and noticed that lug 5 on the input transformer seems to also go to ground. I took off the wire runs to the tube sockets (from lugs 4 and 5 -- twisted pair) and lug 5 still goes to ground. Is this okay? I was thinking that maybe it's not exactly continuous to ground, but there's just a really low resistance between the 6V winding (lug 5) and ground.
All LEDs light up, although the LEDs on the Speedball boards seem significantly dimmer than the LEDs on the 9-pin tube socket. I will check this again once I have the new caps in there.
I should also mention that during initial testing something shorted and made a huge bang, spark, etc... I was thinking that I accidentally shorted something on the PSU with my meter probe, but perhaps not. Could this be a symptom of a greater problem?
Thanks for the help!
Adam
First of all, let me say how much I love the Bottlehead kits. I built a Seduction + C4S last year and have been loving it! I've built numerous electronics projects over the past couple of years, so I'm not a complete newbie when it comes to this sort of stuff. I guess I've been getting cocky and made a few mistakes with my current Crack build. Let me try and break it down for you:
1. The first issue I had, and I think I've fixed, is that one of my 2.49k resistors on the headphone out burned out. Based on other forum posts, I traced the path back to the output coupling caps and I had put one in backwards. They are toast now and have replacements on the way.
I replaced the 2.49k resistors with 1/4W 3.0k resistors. Is that okay?
2. I am not sure if this is a problem or not, but I was getting a couple funky voltage readings during testing. I was testing a few things for continuity (using my DMMs continuity tester) to try and find the problem, and noticed that lug 5 on the input transformer seems to also go to ground. I took off the wire runs to the tube sockets (from lugs 4 and 5 -- twisted pair) and lug 5 still goes to ground. Is this okay? I was thinking that maybe it's not exactly continuous to ground, but there's just a really low resistance between the 6V winding (lug 5) and ground.
All LEDs light up, although the LEDs on the Speedball boards seem significantly dimmer than the LEDs on the 9-pin tube socket. I will check this again once I have the new caps in there.
I should also mention that during initial testing something shorted and made a huge bang, spark, etc... I was thinking that I accidentally shorted something on the PSU with my meter probe, but perhaps not. Could this be a symptom of a greater problem?
Thanks for the help!
Adam
