Whats the best contact cleaner for heavy corrosion, rust, oxidation on electrical components, pcb boards, and plastics?

Hi,

I had a friend borrow my amp, and they blew it up. They plugged in a guitar going through a pedal (EHX canyon) and heard a "pop" and a small amount of smoke appeared.

I want to start fiddling with the unit, but I want to be careful. I'd like to try some things on the cheap before I take it to a tech, though I'm not against having it looked at (I'm just cheap). I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Is the first step to order a new set of tubes and replace the current ones? That sounds cheaper than going straight to a tech, especially if I can send it later to a tech with the tubes (will this cover parts, or will someone want to order their own set?).

The tubes themselves don't look dark (I'm thinking of how a lightbulb gets darkened when it goes).

Should/can I open the back to reveal the guts, transistors, etc? I don't have much proper electronics gear beyond a soldering iron and multimeter.

As for how to unit behaves, it turns on as usual, but never produces any noise (beyond a very slight hum) when I plug into it.

I'm happy to describe anything else needed or I can take pictures of whatever. Thanks in advance!

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Does anyone have a reference schematic for a KT170. If someone has made an amp around it. Have been struggling to find some reference.

Wondering if anyone has built the RoeTest tube tester?

http://www.roehrentest.de

Wondering how much of a pain it is. I have been as looking at vintage testers on eBay. A lot of the testers that come "calibrated" I still question it how well they will work. For the ones I am looking at I could build the RoeTest for around the same price.

Hey guys, I am new to this subreddit and I am looking for some help with my little amp. I've had it for a good while, but broke down right when the pandemic hit, and just recently I have been able to find a stable job and have money to potentially throw at this thing in order to fix it.

The rundown of my problematic 6505mh:

• Bought it back in 2017ish/2018ish used
• Had a weird buzzing sound, similar to a ground loop sound even when the guitar wasn't plugged in. This sound wasn't noticeable when plugging into the headphones in the back
• Took it to a local shop and had it repaired, but they returned it to me with the TSI lights red
• I found that it doesn't have a normal 115v/230v switch but a 100v/115v one instead

The amp still produces sound, but like I said, it is very weak compared to a normal operating 6505mh. Less perceived oomf from my friend and I alike. I have ordered a new pair of EL84s for this amp, and the lights are still red, so at the very least the power tubes weren't the problem. I was hoping that maybe I could get some insight on this sub for so easy to do at home troubleshooting before I consider taking it to another shop, because I no longer trust my local one. I have no experience biasing amps, I have pulled the fuse and I get an audible reading from my multimeter that it is intact. Lastly, while perusing other forums, a user mentioned taking note of the resistance over the mains. At 100v I got a reading of 23ohms and it almost doubled to 44ohms at 115v; I have a Marshall JTM60 that currently works fine and the measured resistance across the mains reads 2.5ohms. Once again, I do not know if this is normal but it was mentioned and easy enough to perform. Any thoughts?

When you're working with high voltage, there is no such thing as a dumb question. Please use this thread to ask about practical or conceptual things that have you stumped.

Really awesome answers and recurring questions may earn a place in the Wiki.

If you'd like to nominate a comment to be included, just reply [Wiki] (with the brackets)! The mods will be automatically notified that something awesome just happened.

As always, we are built around education and collaboration. Be awesome to your fellow tube heads.

I’ve recently gotten into replicating Lemmy’s bass rig. Dont feel like spending $3k for a legit super bass and I’ve always wanted to build an amp.

https://www.mojotone.com/British-Style-100W-Lead-Bass-Head-Amp-Kit

Anyone built one of these? Anything I should know going into it? Is it solid as is or are there some minor tweaks and upgrades I should be looking into?

Looking forward to it thanks

Still thinking about the design of my next tube stereo-amplifier. I want to use twin-triode cathode followers to drive my KT-88’s into class AB2. I’ve got about every kind of twin triode there is to work with. Right now I’m considering 6SN7 tubes, of some variety, but I’m also wondering if 12AH7, 6SL7, 6BL7 or something else would also work as a cathode follower. I’d like to stay with octal twins, if I could, but I would consider 9-pin types also.

I will also need to figure out what tubes to use for the phase-splitter and voltage amplifier stages. I’m thinking that 2033s, or 6SC7s, direct-coupled to 6SN7s, would provide enough gain to drive the KT-88s full-out, plus a few dB for NFB.

The negative DC current-sources, required by the long-tailed pairs and cathode-follower stages, would be provided by NPN transistors, 2N3439 or similar.

I was original thinking about omitting the cathode followers, and just using big film-caps for coupling, but in an earlier AB1 design, a similar bias-network was overcome by grid-emission, and the tubes went red-plate. I think the low-Z of the cathode followers would help to stabilize the output tubes in high-output situations. KT-88s are not cheap.

What do you think?

I was walking down a road and because I am tall I smashed my legs into an object so I fell down on all fours. Somebody left in the street and old tube radio that is not looking too bad.... It's a RADIO EFORIE from communist Romania. I got it home, weights about 20lbs and had a look inside. It looks unexpectedly good. I have a bit of a background into engineering and electronics, but it's my first time going into tubes. All I know is that I should short the caps with a screw driver so I won't kill myself. At the moment I am looking for advice on how should I start learning about tubes / what resources should I use/ is Radiotron Designer's Handbook 1953 enough ? Tell me all you would want to know if you would start your tubeing again with 0 knowledge...

When you're working with high voltage, there is no such thing as a dumb question. Please use this thread to ask about practical or conceptual things that have you stumped.

Really awesome answers and recurring questions may earn a place in the Wiki.

If you'd like to nominate a comment to be included, just reply [Wiki] (with the brackets)! The mods will be automatically notified that something awesome just happened.

As always, we are built around education and collaboration. Be awesome to your fellow tube heads.

When you're working with high voltage, there is no such thing as a dumb question. Please use this thread to ask about practical or conceptual things that have you stumped.

Really awesome answers and recurring questions may earn a place in the Wiki.

If you'd like to nominate a comment to be included, just reply [Wiki] (with the brackets)! The mods will be automatically notified that something awesome just happened.

As always, we are built around education and collaboration. Be awesome to your fellow tube heads.

When you're working with high voltage, there is no such thing as a dumb question. Please use this thread to ask about practical or conceptual things that have you stumped.

Really awesome answers and recurring questions may earn a place in the Wiki.

If you'd like to nominate a comment to be included, just reply [Wiki] (with the brackets)! The mods will be automatically notified that something awesome just happened.

As always, we are built around education and collaboration. Be awesome to your fellow tube heads.

I have finished building a stereo power amplifier, and I was going to start on making a preamp until I ran across a local Pioneer sx34 very inexpensively.

There is no built-in preamp output on the receiver. My plan was to tap the grids of the power stage input and run it back to the tape record jacks with an additional decoupling capacitor. Does this seem like a rational idea? Is there a more straightforward way I am not seeing?

Sorry for the low res schematic it’s the best I can find out there.

So i fell asleep with it on. I wasn't asleep all night and awoke in the middle of the night and turned it off. However now the mic input channel only comes through when turned all the way up and thats barely moving the VU meter. If i plug a mic into the monitor channel it works just fine though i have no control over the mic. I recall somehow being able to adjust it but can't figure out how now. Could i have burnt out a tube that worked for the mic input channel but not the monitor channel? I tried swapping tubes but admittedly i only have old tubes to swap with though a lot of them.

i assume the reason why it still picks up a signal when plugged into the mic input channel but only barely is because one of the tubes is shot and so its not getting the amount of gain it needs. I have no idea thats just a guess based on my very poor understanding of tubes. Though i want to learn and should start considering the amount of tube stuff i have.

Let me start by saying why I want to start building an amplifier. I have a Massdrop/Cavalli Tube Hybrid, and it sounds wonderful, while being a piece of crap in many ways. For example, the volume pot sucks. The SDAC that is built-in gets power and signal from the same USB input. I'm reduced to using the dac and preamp and volume knob of my Fiio K7, and keeping the volume on the MCTH just under a level that is noisy in silence. It sounds, again, magnificent. I love the sound. I just hate how Frankensteinish my setup is, and knowing they cheaped out in some areas makes me suspicious of where else there might be room for improvement in the parts used, and maybe the design. It also has a power supply bringing in 28V at 1.25A, so it is probably starving the 6922 tube.

So, I want to replace my MCTH with something built to be top of the line. I want to end up with at least 1W into 32 Ohms and 500mW into 300 Ohms. You may say I don't need that much. Well, if I can have that much, I want it.

I have looked over many kits available online, and haven't found anything that appeals to me. The Bottlehead Crack is the go-to for first-timers, but I'm unmotivated to spend so much money and time on an amp that won't power my favorite headphones, the HE1000 Stealth (HEKSt). I would rather spend more time and more money and get in deeper over my head, and end up with an amp I can use and love with all my headphones for years to come. I would rarely use a BHC, because I rarely use my Sennheiser headphones that would sound really good with it. I doubt a BHC would make $300 headphones sound as good or better than $1400 headphones with the MCTH.

Right now, I'm looking at using o1 AI to help me adapt Millet's Starving Student II to 12AU7 tubes. I'm also considering rebuilding my MCTH from scratch, leaving out the DAC, using the same box, and upgrading parts like the potentiometer and maybe some capacitors with premium pieces.

According to o1 preview, to get the power out that I want, my amplifier must handle peak voltages up to ±17.3V and peak currents up to 250mA.

I could buy a toroid and build a diode rectifier and use a capacitor input filter for smoothing. That sounds like a lot of complicated figuring and working, but possibly doable.

I could buy a kit like this one.

I could use something someone already figured out and built. I just don't know. What do you suggest?

When you're working with high voltage, there is no such thing as a dumb question. Please use this thread to ask about practical or conceptual things that have you stumped.

Really awesome answers and recurring questions may earn a place in the Wiki.

If you'd like to nominate a comment to be included, just reply [Wiki] (with the brackets)! The mods will be automatically notified that something awesome just happened.

As always, we are built around education and collaboration. Be awesome to your fellow tube heads.