• 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.

Audio Research SP6B repair advice needed

Hi all. It's been awhile. Had a few health problems, so was out of it for almost a year...
Not sure I'm in the right forum - got this nice SP6B preamp, found a dead diode, burnt resistor and a shorted cap in power supply, replaced. Brought it up on variac - all is nice: current draw is about 350 mA, HV and LV all check out. But when I plug it in directly, and turn it on - boom! - fuses blow one after another. From what I was able to catch on my digital ampermeter, it draws a lot on turn-on, like 5 or 6 amps. there must be a problem somewhere in power supply. Any suggestions appreciated. Thank you.
 
If it works with the Variac, and all the DC voltages you checked are nominal
(and you should check ALL of them), probably some part of the start-up circuit is bad.
Have you checked all of the parts for good/bad?
 
Once i had a resistor that had cracked open on the board side so it was not easy to find, because of this there was a arc over to a transistor close to it. After removing the resistor i found that the board has become resistive as well from the arcing (over the years maybe).
 
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