An illustrated guide to building an F5

I've replaced the wrong trim pots and now getting sensible matching measurements on R7 / R8 against DC offset on the speakers outs, except R7 reads negative mV to R8 positive mV.

This is with both +ve DMM clips to the "top" of the F5 PCB. I can't read the schematic well enough to know whether that's right or I have soldered something in upside-down again? 😕

I am not getting any warmth in my heatsinks either so starting to think there's something amiss.
 
Returned to the test bench this evening. DMMs still hooked up as they were last night, turned them on, powered up, all LEDs on OK - but bulb tester shining bright 🙁 In the moment before I hit the off switch the DMMs were showing me the same figures as I left it with yesterday too.

No smoke / pops, nothing visibly obvious amiss.

Going round the connections all looks fine. The only way to make the bulb dim correctly is powering up with either PSU rail disconnected from the rectifier - so maybe that points to a short somewhere on the PSU itself.

I'll try disconnecting the amp boards and see where that leads me.
 
Hi Toolkit,

To followup on ItsAllInMyHead's post, you cannot bias with a dim bulb tester in place.

If that's what you had done, you need to dial the pots P1 and P2 back to zero (so
R5 and R6 measure close to zero with power down). Check again that dim bulb
test passes. Then remove dim bulb and then start the bias procedure again.
 
Better to have discovered it now before potentially biasing to 0V7 with the dim bulb in place. Once removed, there would have been a high chance of smoke. It also helps explain why the heatsinks were so cool.

The great news is that there's a very high chance you have it all proper. 😀