• 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.

Photo Gallery

Hey, guys, I've been admiring your guys work. They all look so great. Now, I've been trying to get into this kind of thing(I still have a long, long, long ways to go.) I bought a BH Crack + Speedball the other day, and am waiting on it to ship. That should be easy enough I think. What should I research? Any sources you guys used when you were first learning? I have a iron, MM, and stuff like that. I have made some succesful headphone cables, so I can solder a little bit. Thanks so much for any help you guys can provide for me, I really appreciate it:)
 
How about a vintage pair of monoblocks?
There have not been many in this thread.
So lets have a go.
They are Cinetechnic Debrie industrial cinema amplifiers from the early 1950s.
They are just so well built and easy to service.
All cast chassis and cabinet parts and the only faults that were present from new as they came from a workshop clean out and were a skip dive recovery and were the dodgy ones that got put to one side.
I have no idea what they sound like with the output stages driven into distortion as they make my ears heart before I can get that far with the volume:D
The lineup is EF37A ECC33 EL37 EL37 EZ32.
 

Attachments

  • DSCF6885.JPG
    DSCF6885.JPG
    99.6 KB · Views: 1,487
  • DSCF6889.JPG
    DSCF6889.JPG
    114.2 KB · Views: 1,449
  • DSCF6890.JPG
    DSCF6890.JPG
    152.3 KB · Views: 1,414
They were found in the early 1980s and have been stored since then until now.
There is a mod that I will need to do as all the small capacitors are 0.1uf and there is one that I would like to see go up to 1uf or even 10uf as it is in the cathode of the ECC33 and it has no negative feedback going to it.
They will then be the winter HiFi for the lounge. We do not have air con.
 
They did not need a great deal of work to get them going.
The worst one had half of the output transformer shorted out.
It was because at the time of manufacture the start of the half of the primary wound over the secondary had come loose.
The operative had just stuffed it down the side of the link that looped over the secondary to the second half of the winding causing an intermittant short and loads of distortion.
It took no time to fix it once I had found it. I then told the guy that was going to rewind it that I had managed to fix it.
The last thing to do is to change the 0.1uf in the cathode of the triode driving the phase splitter. The other half of the ECC33 is wired with the capacitors on anode and cathode so only one triode for the phase splitter.
 
My first PP amplifier, ECC83 + EL12 and Hammond 1650HA OPT in pentode mode. Built in 2010.
 

Attachments

  • Amplif 001.jpg
    Amplif 001.jpg
    168.8 KB · Views: 457
  • Amplif 014.jpg
    Amplif 014.jpg
    84.6 KB · Views: 310
  • Amplif 006.jpg
    Amplif 006.jpg
    103.7 KB · Views: 333
  • Amplif gata (7).jpg
    Amplif gata (7).jpg
    99.7 KB · Views: 313
  • Amplif gata (4).jpg
    Amplif gata (4).jpg
    92.5 KB · Views: 874