Iron Pumpkin(s) and other smaller vegetable animals, Tips 'n' Tricks thread

Iron pumpkin was allowed to travel to a german diy hifi fest : ) Surrounded by really nice components, also different very nice preamplifiers, pumpkin performed veeeery good, even being the winner in the ears of some persons, including mine. 'being a bit more natural' was comment of a co-listener.
But not to open ugly battlefield of dead winners : ), just to report updated impressions.
I did not tried WCF Buffer config, but i found the absence of X-tra sweetness, X-tra deep stage, made by adding h2 very pleasent and natural to the ears. Especially with slightly overproduced material (fat voices etc)
the absence of adding something was quite refreshing.



as i wrote, i had problems with the cabeling, most likely signal on ground. 30% of sound on any other selected input, also little sound coming out of speakers with poweramp on but preamp off..:scratch1:
sounds easy, but i looked 1000 times on the cables, measured every single input: Zero ohms (mute-short) on input not selected, no connection signal-ground when selected (which is right behaviour i guess).
 

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Hi ZM : ), i´m ashamed occupying parts of your brain with my problems, but i know, you are seeking for good joke :rofl:



First the only pic i can send, i´m currently in holidays (local) for 2 weeks, so cant send any other information. And what i suspect as being the problem isnt really proved, nor can i believe that. Last measurings detected a broken relay in the input selection. On one channel (input) i measures a gnd-signal(mute-) short, no matter if the input was selected or not.
It should be short when not selected
it should not be shorted when selected.
It was tricky to detect that, cause the relay seems in a state of dying and not really dead. So sometimes ok sometimes not.
Measurement shows that the trigger 12V VOltage (8,5V to 21V to gnd) is ok. So it is not the Flatbandcable or so. Triggervoltage is ok.
This is what i found shortly before leaving to holidays. Of course i belive that I myself f*--d anything up, cabeling or so.. 1:20000 its me : ) and i know that.

But also the broken (or supposed to be broken) relay makes different sound. More a slower slap, than a fast klick.
I did also do measurements between the "middle" 4 ps of the relay and when triggered behaved like untriggerd..but thats what i wanted to recheck when being back.

However i cannot really assign the behavier with channels and signal to this problem..
 

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Official Court Jester
Joined 2003
Paid Member
in that case , feel free to post holiday porn in Da Pub :clown:

when you arrive back at home , same thing - post pictures to me ..... there must be some simple and logical solution to problem you have

regarding relay - anything is possible of course , but Takamisawa relays are of greatest quality ...... proof of that is that you can find them in military and medical equipment ..... and of several hundreds I had through my hands I had no single one bad from packung

though, in years of service work , I did saw few burned with excessive soldering technique :rofl:
 
After a long period of time, I finally managed to assemble the preamp. Because I do not need so many entries, I kept an XLR and a RCA. In this case, I dropped the selector from the front and put one switch in the back, with which I select the entrance.
Houses, made to order, are 100 mm tall. The top and bottom plates have a thickness of 6 mm, so I managed to mount everything in a space of 88 mm and I am very happy to have succeeded :).
Transformers have a softstart, which can be started from the remote control.
How does it sound? I'm not talented to describe. But from everything I've got, it's the most transparent and neutral preamp.
I can hear the smallest details, with a superb positioning in instrument and voices space. Female voices sound incredible. Very articulated bass. In short, I love this preamplifier and many thanks to Aleksandar!
Problems - I have two.
- Volume increases counterclockwise
- at position 11, the sound disappears in both channels, in the other positions everything is OK.
I would be grateful if ZenMod can help me with some advice :)
Thank you .
 

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