• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

6V6 line preamp

well...no dice yet...

hooked it back up with signal to signal and rca ground to rca ground and nothing but terrible loud hummmm...switching speaker outputs made no difference.

I am thinking now that maybe my pot is not hooked up correctly...

What are your successful wiring schemes for your input to pot to board to output wiring schemes?

I have an alps blue dual pot.

I went RCA ground to pot ground. then ran another wire from pot ground to board ground input. Could this be causing my ground loop?
 
OK, well that is how I have it...

RCA input Earth to pot, then from the pot earth connection to the board input ground.

Question though...where should the RCA output ground originate? The way mine is set up it ends up being the same point as where the input ground originates. I started thinking that this may be causing the loop.

It is a 3 pin pot and I have three others to reference so I am sure I am OK there.

I still suspect that it has to do with the output RCA's and the grounding scheme.
 
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OK, one more update.

I am using Broskies PS-1 for the PSU which has regulated B+ and heater supply. I originally had the heaters set up for series but last night I changed them to parallel.

I ran the RCA ouput ground to the ground on my PCB and the RCA output signal to the signal output and nothing but terrible hummm.

THEN I swapped ouput wires, PCB ground to RCA signal output and PCB signal output to RCA ground and IT MADE LOVELY MUSIC...for about 40 seconds...then the terrible hummm returned. UGHHH!!!!

This one is really stumping me...
 

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yup...rearranged to this and did two more things...
1. tried a toroid just to rule out xformer noise
2. yanked out the rca outputs from the chassis

with the toroid the hum comes on immediately and is even louder.

After I rearranged it with the EI core xformer it came on and played nicely for about a minute and then the humm came back. Thats when I tried the toroid.

So I am at a total loss here...I even threw in a pair of EL34's again to rule out the tubes...and same thing...hummmmmmmmm

I am about ready to throw in the towel on this one...
 
diyAudio Chief Moderator
Joined 2002
Paid Member
Its either you got something traced totally wrong regarding the audio schematic on PCB or you get a strong oscillation, which sounds like hum if high amplitude. Maybe that is why it comes and goes. In an open loop pre with a reg you can either get it from the interaction with the reg, or with the signal run and the grid. Are there 1K grid stoppers tightly soldered to the grid pins? I suggest you hard wire it.
 
diyAudio Chief Moderator
Joined 2002
Paid Member
If you got one, set it to AC input and check the B+ line at 5mV and 50uSec. If it ain't a horizontal line, but its a sine or a thick mess, its power line oscillation. If you have not got a scope its difficult to know. I would start by twisting B+ GND wires. Are the ''triodizing'' resistors tight for pins 3,4? Larger grid resistors I doubt they would change something.
 
And they did not...I tried 1.5K and 2.1K and same result.

I think that for the principle of the matter I will P2P this I just need to reorder some resistors. I have all the other stuff.

I cant believe that 2 different PSU's I use on 2 other amps I have are that noisy. It must be something in the layout of my PCB.