• 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.

Preamp buzz when you touch valve glass on 1 valve (of 8)

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Ok - I have tried the cans and they don't unfortunately make any difference. Either earthed or left alone.
I have finished shielding the DC heater cables, and this has probably removed 40-50% of hum, I am going to fit a steel plate earthed to the chassis to help isolate the transformer further from the line stage valves, which when tried roughly by hand made a small difference.
I am also trying to clean the bases.

After that I am lost to try and find where this hum is coming from, so any more ideas - yes please!
 
I had this fault on something I repaired over 50 years ago but I am racking my brains to remember what I did to cure it.


In radio communications steel plates were used to separate the sensitive RF section from the rest and transformers were always a distance away from the input aerial ( antenna ) connection .


A can can be made to shroud the transformer but it must be earthed and also changing the angle of the transformer ( swiveling it ) can help.



Have a read of this PDF by Kemet capacitor design engineers in relation to stacked multi layer ceramic capacitors ( class 2 and class 3 ) producing noise/buzzing etc -






https://sh.kemet.com/Lists/Technica... Reduced Microphonics and Sound Emissions.pdf
 
more progress

Thanks for all the help so far.

So with a couple of shielding plates and the screened DC I am in a lot better place. No advance on the V4 buzz though, but hey.. it's the background hum I want to reduce. I will TRY and screen the AC heater cables today and see if that helps.

I have also noticed the 12BH7A valve is very hot, and only 540V not 640V as per the circuit diagram on pins 1 and 6 - does this prompt any ideas! :)
 

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