Polytone power supply rehab..can u help?

[CHARLIE X]

Yea..sounds logical...but when you place the cap down onto the board, those holes are really no where near the lead that is dangling...the lead actually looks like it was soldered to the resistor that is there..anyway..that is where it lines up when you hold the cap in place. When i replace the transistors, i will pull off the board and look at the other side to see if there are clues...a friend of mine has the same exact amp ...im trying to get him to open his up to see if he has the same thing goin on...but he's a afraid to pull it out...

[powerbob]

Your schematic did not post.

It looks to me like there is solder rosin by the resistor lead and hard to see but the solder looks flat on the end of the cap like it was spread out on the pcb next to the resistor. So the cap was probably tacked to the side of the resistor lead.

[CHARLIE X]

I think you are correct...it lines up almost perfectly. There is some solder on the resistor lead also....i could see that falling off...just wish one of these schematics showed this...they all show CR1 and give no data on it. I tried to upload the schem again...maybe its being filtered out?

[soundguruman]

Originally Posted by CHARLIE X

Hi, I am new to the group and love the sound of my Polytone baby Taurus with 8 inch speaker. This thing is old now (like me) so I would think its not too hard to make a "Polyclone' of this thing. I have some electronics background, but never built an amp before...not great at translating the schematic to a PCB. Can anyone recommend a starting point? A book or something to get started with cleaning up this power supply? Its now full of pops and buzzes...probably needs new filter caps...i dont even know which things on the board are the filter caps...or what they do. So..thats where im at. Anybody ?

Well actually, if you are hearing buzz, especially 120 cycle, there is a pretty fair chance you do have a bad transistor, or diode, not that changing the old electrolytic capacitors will help also...
pops can be dirty controls and jacks, or bad solder connections.
The transistors in these amps need to be changed fairly frequently, I suppose they run hot and there is a lack of thermal management.
You can add some better heat sinks, newer packages, or use insulators to mount the new transistors / packages to the chassis...
or just change them now and again, anyhow they blow.
I have no idea what to change them to, as far as substitutions, there have not been many of these Polytones around for a number of years.
There "should " be some substitute matched pairs that you could use...
anyhow, when they do work, they sound good for a clean sound. I never liked the built in distortion on these amps.