DRBILL

FINI WROTE "You forgot the part about how you were only wearing underwear..." HOW DID YOU KNOW![] DRBILL

Yes. It is an anxiety hang over from working my way through college as the organist/choirmaster at the local Episcopal church. I rush in late. The hymns in the service leaflet are NOT the ones in my service planning book. During the prelude (!) I anxiously turn to the first posted hymn in the hymnal to see if I know it. It has five flats and the page is black with intricate harmony and six stanzas. By the "Amen", people were laughing out loud. There are variations on this dream. They never cast me in a favorable light. DRBILL

A VERY British speaker. Neither this nor that, but just so. Take a pass on them. DRBILL

Help is as near as your neighborhood RadioStore. Ask for 64-2346 or any of three other designs available. These are peel and stick. Obviously you will want to replace all four. DRBILL

WHAT! You didn't like the KT90s? I'm crushed. Woe, woe, woe. DRBILL

"One more thought, someone might ask a friend to take on the gear as a labor of love if the friend is a technical type. However, I know when people ask... "pray for me," they usually have no idea what they are asking." Send 'er on over, or better yet bring it! It will soon be cool enough to return to the bench. DRBILL

Well, I guess this would be "exceptable".[] DB

Today, I am. But it is still early. It never sounds the same twice. I always seem to have a lot of baggage with me when I go back to the music room. If I am there, alone, late at night, it is glorious. If I invite a discriminating visitor, it sounds like the PA at the bus station. It is two distinct systems, depending on whether the door to the hall is open or closed. And why do I always imagine that it is my gear? Maybe it was a crummy recording. A dud CD sounds infinitely worse on good equipment. And I could go on and on. I don't expect to change anything major. I tweak something almost daily. Let's face it. It is an illness. DRBILL

I happened to be visiting the lab the day Paul tested the little bronze locomotive with compressed air. It ran backward, but it was an easy fix. I was amazed that he had built it. By his own admission he was a klutz at "industrial arts". I once asked him if he would like to join a work party at the church to help releather the pipe organ. He laughed and offered to send somebody. He said that if he touched it, it would never play again! (He did come and watch, picked up and examined every part, and asked a million questions!) Another aspect of his genius was his ability to surround himself with stunning craftsmen who could take an idea and run with it. I seem to recall that the Klipsch Cartridge required some sort of transformer. I may have some information in a box in storage. I'll see. It is an excuse to drag that stuff out. The Eargle recordings were significant. Klipsch technology had raced far ahead of practicality. What did you listen to on your Klipschorns?! DRBILL DRBILL

Well, yes. Assuming that he was actually playing a record. We are talking about quiescent state. You might well expect some thermonic "whoosh", but it is not unreasonable, in quality equipment, to expect it to be reasonably hum free. I don't think his expectations are unreasonable. He is conducting a perfectly valid test of his equipment. I wish there were more people like him. Perfection is impossible, but we can at least nudge it a bit. It is the Klipsch "way". Thanks for your thoughts. DRBILL

With the phono leads unhooked from the preamp, do you get hum? If, so, it is a preamp problem. But if it only hums when the phono cables are attached to the preamp, it would have to be the TT, cartridge, or cables. I am a superannuated citizen (old F**T) who doesn't keep very well up to date on new equipment, so I doun't know about your Scout TT. How does the cartridge shell connect to the arm? It there a quick disconnect so that you can change the cartridge/shell? If so, there are probably spring loaded contacts. These are terrible offenders. You can clean them with alcohol after you have brightened them with a common pencil eraser. That may take care of everything. Back in the heyday of audio, we always used shorting plugs on any unused preamp input. It is a practice that should be put back into general use. It will make a quiet preamp even quieter. If you can't find any, you can make some out of common RCA plugs. Just solder a link between the pin and the ground shell. You are attending to the ground problems which is good. Be careful not to allow audio cables near power cords. Never run them parallel. I've probably told you a lot of stuff you already know. Good luck. Let me know if you are successful. Regards, DRBILL

There is almost always a posting about hum somewhere on the Forum. Hum is the bane of every tube owner's existence. There is always a little. Sometimes you have to put your ear up to the speaker, but it's there. Most equipment would pass when used with typical modren low-efficiency speakers. But hook them up to heratige Klipsch speakers and there it is in all of its cloying glory. I had a very faint hum in the right channel of a pristine Dynaco PAS-2. It was not the common 60Hz hum, but the series of harmonics above the missing fundamental. This preamp was feeding Mark IIIs feeding Klipschorns. I did the usual search including ground loops, power cord polarity, proper dressing of internal leads, shorting plugs on unused inputs, etc. Nothing. I replaced the 12X4. Nothing. Going for bigger bucks, I replaced the quad filter cap. Nope. I added additional chassis ground to the PCs. Still humming, right channel, only. Drastic measures were needed. I decided to lift the lead from eyelet 9 of PC-5 (volume control to grid) to see if the hum was originating from the board or before the board. I grasped the wire with a long nose and before I touched the iron to the eyelet the wire lifted cleanly out! A 40+ year old cold solder joint! This joint would have passed the most descriminating QC eye. Maybe twelve hours work, $50+ in parts, and a one second fix. My guess is that the cold joint was acting as a detector and was picking up the diode whine from the heater supply. With an antenna, I could have probably gotten the news! This is a long story. But it goes to show how elusive hum can be. Never give up. Something causes it and that something can be found and fixed. Any other hum stories out there? DRBILL

Thanks Mac, In addition to everything else, I need to get a new audio receiver. The Sony is c. 15 years old. I hope to get something that will interface with my HD stuff with fibreoptics. The Dolby system is considerably obsolete! This, of course, wont improve the sync problem, but will make the system more interesting. The old Sony just wont quit or even slow down. DRBILL

DD, I have a book (terribly worn) that I highly reccomend: Tube Substitution Handbook by William Smith and Barry Buchanan, now in the second edition 1998. Prompt Publications (a division of SAMS). ISBN 0-7906-1148-1. Antique Electronic Supply has them at $21.95. www.tubesandmore.com You need their catalog, too. DB

To prevent any possibility of a gummy residue, use 50% BLO and 50% Gum Turpentine. The GT allows maximum penetration of the BLO. It has a nice aroma as a bonus. I learned this formula, used for centuries, from Altar Guilds in Episcopal Churches who have the responsibility of keeping priceless wooden church furnishing in top condition. For badly soiled items, the mixture becomes 1/3 BLO, 1/3 GT, 1/3 distilled white vinegar. Shake this untill emulsified, wipe it on, wipe it off. Later, use the 50-50 mixture. Avoid any product that has silicone. This produces the dreaded "fish eye" effect if future refinishing become necessary. I knew a violin maker who swore by Neatsfoot Oil, which is often used on leather products due to its ability to penetrate deeply without oxidation. He used it on unfinished wood prior (sometimes a year) to varnishing. That profession has ponderous patience! He also told me that the ancients soaked the wood in urine prior to finishing. I don't think we should go there. Best, DRBILL

DD Have you ever noticed how one of our posts has a tendency to kill a thread? I feel like Typhoid Mary. Maybe we should abandon spelling and grammar and pepper our posts with scatology and slurs about other's parentage. DB

I have never posted in this area, so please excuse an old vacuum tube relic asking obvious questions! I can't claim to have a home theatre. We have a nice Sony HD CRT TV and a nice Sony HD SAT 300 tuner and a Sony 5 channel Dolby tuner feeding Klipsch Tangents L&R, and a Klipsch KSC-C1 center channel, and two old Sony 3 way surrounds at the back corners. It isn't a shabby set-up for two old 60+ "seasoned citizens" to go to sleep to every night. But there is a problem. When watching the local off-air HD stations, the picture and the sound are often not synchronized. I'm guessing that it is the way the equipment processes the digital audio and video. Anybody else noticed this effect? Can I do anything to improve this? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. DRBILL

PRN DRBILL

"Not knowing, I would hesitate to say." A quote from my grandfather of blessed memory. The 6922 is in a family of tubes which include 6DJ8, ECC88, and 7308, all being double triodes. For reasons I can only guess, Joint Army Navy (JAN) had the need to scrap the common nomenclature and assign everything a number peculiar to its organization. Many JAN tubes were common vacuum tubes that had been made more rugged and non-microphonic with added mica supports. Many had special heaters with long-life characteristics and the ability to withstand many on-off cycles and wide voltage variances. Being a double triode, I can imagine they found some use in mobile audio applications. Although this is a stretch, I can also imagine their use in early computers as a simple high speed on-off switch. Having said all of that, it is now your turn to imagine! After all, you write homilies![] DRBILL

DD As for the time it took to build the adaptors, I remember doing six at a time in an assembly-line, so I'm not sure how long it would take per each. I think the suggested 40 minutes would be very generous. It consists of a tube socket and a tube base. You solder wires to the socket and then route them to the proper pinouts on the base. That sounds fairly simple, but it requires considerable concentration. The plate cap exits the tube socket on the side. The hole is already drilled for you. The amplifiers you heard at my house all had 6BG6's in the final. My present center channel Heath/Williamson has them, also. My son-in-law also uses them driving three Cornwalls. He has stopped using them in the band because they are unwieldy on the road because of a tendency to drop out of the amplifier socket when mounted upside down! In stationary installations, they are hard to beat at $6 a pop for a high quality, American -made, NOS, 6L6 equivalent! There is one step in the instructions that I highly recommend that you do. Test each adaptor by putting a 6BG6 in it and testing it on a tube tester set up for a 6L6. This will assure that you have no wiring mistakes. DRBILL

Check Michael Marx's website, opening page at the bottom (www.vacuumtubes.com). He has NOS Phillips 6BG6GA's for $6! They are a heavy duty 6L6 with a slightly different pinout. He offers a conversion kit that you plug in the amplifier and then plug the 6BG6 into the kit. No need to mod the amp. I have used them for years with nothing but praise. DRBILL

Tony, You'll have to count me out. Conflict. Sorry. DRBILL

With the larger pictures on the upper left, I got a couple of PMs asking where the picture of PWK was taken. Thanks. I'm really deeply flattered. C'est moi. At my bench. Stumped, as is often the case. DRBILL

---------------- On 3/26/2005 2:37:11 AM DrWho wrote: Btw, you don't HAVE to have a third amplifier to do this either...one of the boxes works from the output of your amps at speaker level, instead of the more typical line level boxes. That advantage to the third amp is that it gives you much simpler control over the center channel volume.---------------- I don't think so. That would have to be "subtractive" and I believe that everybody, including PWK has retracted that idea. I just gave a moderator a "hideing" for misinformation. I'm sorry for being negative today. I guess somebody has to do it. DRBILL

---------------- On 8/25/2005 9:26:50 AM Steve Donalson wrote: All of that being said, you will not have any trouble with any equipment designed to operate on USA's "110vac" lines, even with the fluctuations we encounter on a daily, even hourly, basis.&nbsp. ---------------- Sorry, Steve, but experience belies this. Anything above 125VAC puts classic Dynaco Mark III's in peril. Even voltage surges can take them out. Even when biased correctly, at 125VAC, using contemporary issue tubes, plates are apt to glow and grids are apt to incandesce. The electrolytic filter capacitors are only rated at 525vdc and are exposed to 490VDC at 117VAC! The headroom disappears at 125VAC. This is assuming a fresh NOS twistlok! Ask Craig, or ANYBODY who deals with Dynaco amplifiers and you will get the same information. You have given advice that will prove costly and disastrous to owners of this equipment. I urge a speedy retraction. As a moderator, we will hold you to a higher standard. DRBILL