• 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.

Tubes4HiFi SP20E Buzz

Hello all. Hoping someone on the forum can help me out with this problem. I recently acquired a SP20E preamp that has nothing but a loud buzz coming from the outputs. I see a couple of potential problems that my/may not be contributing the problem.

1) Appears to be a missing resistor - see photo
2) The the second smaller toroid has two taps tied together 1.9+2.9 but the board input appears to require 9V

Can someone share some insight if the above will have any impact (ie is that resistor location meant to be empty and is the existing toroid acceptable). If these two issues are fine, can you suggest where to look for the cause of the buzz and where to find a schematic. I've reached out to Dan at Tubes4Hifi but not yet received a response. Much appreciated.
 

Attachments

  • 12.jpg
    12.jpg
    23.7 KB · Views: 72
  • 1.jpg
    1.jpg
    127.7 KB · Views: 68
There appear to be a couple different versions of the board, judging from the old web page, so the missing resistor could just be something that was later eliminated. I suspect the problem is a fried regulator in the high-voltage supply, so that the AC ripple is no longer shunted to ground. I hope Dan will provide you with a schematic.