1/4" phone jacks, grid leaks, grid stoppers...

[Erik Mandaville]

Hi, Michael:

It's cool to see that Klipsch logo under your name! Very neat!

That's my old Nikon close-up lens from my old manual SLR. It was an expensive lens, and was glad it fit on my new digital SLR. These pics were done pretty quickly, and I could have adjusted for light color temp. and stuff, but my camera is another thing I need to spend more time with. It's even more complicated than our digital processor, with a seemingly endless number of features.

These aren't anywhere near the quality of JimT's and that of some others pictures (Edster used to post very nice pictures, too), but I'm working on it.

Thank you for the compliment.

BTW: You're right, some of this is kind of techie, and I was thinking I maybe should have posted it in the Technical forum. Mark and Craig frequent this haunt, though, and their responses were helpful.

Erik

[NOSValves]

I'll tell ya: New (orange drop) coupling capcitors. Please note I'm not about to go off on a rant on how I think orange drops hung the moon or anything. It wasn't in the original plan for the headphone modification.

The chassis is so small and tight, it's really very hard to work with. My one concern from the beginning was the close proximity of one coupling cap (blue rectangular thingy) to the hole that need to be drilled out so the headphone jack would fit. It's about an inch or even less from the hole, and right in front of it.

So, try as I might to brace my arm and drill slowly and carefully, those of you who have done chassis work with hand-held drills probably know where I'm going with this. Aluminum is softer and easier to work with, but as soon as the bit broke through the other side of the steel front panel, it pulled, very hard, all the way into the chassis. Ugh. In the process, knocked out that coupling cap and one B+ lead to the output tube. Both of those were fortunately very simple repairs, and I replaced the caps in both channels so they'd match. Works perfectly, and is really just about dead quiet in terms of background noise, where the Moth amp had a very low level background hum (with phones).

Erik

Been there done that a number of times. Don't you just hate that no matter how you try the drill bit just takes over and the next thing you know..........

[mike stehr]

"Been there done that a number of times. Don't you just hate that no matter how you try the drill bit just takes over and the next thing you know.........."

I've never had that happen to me........[*-)]

[Erik Mandaville]

Jim:

Thanks for the kind words, as well. Radios are honestly becoming more and more interesting to me, but I've never really made one from scratch. I've done a couple of kits, though, and also like to restore those really old battery powered sets from the early lasst century. I just have a couple, but they are really cool. I use my Atwater Kent and Radiola horn speaker for AM all the time. Hi-fidelity those old horns are NOT, but they have a sound that works on my like a time machine. I imagine people gathered around the radio in the evenings, listening to radio shows or news. Marie bought me the AK, and intentionally found one that would need some work. Tons of fun!

I've done a bit of art related photography -- for illustrations for articles I've written, documenting my own or student art work, and that kind of stuff. My dad taught me how to develop film and make prints with his B & W enlarger in the usual, old-fashioned home photo lab (aka: bathroom), and it's something I've always enjoyed. I just find fully manual photography so much easier than digital, but I suppose it's something I just need to get used to.

Mike/Craig: Those mishaps just go with the territory, I guess. I clearly remember one afternoon about 15 years ago when I was doing the final sanding on the hardwood bases for a pair of speaker stands I welded together. Our dog Tonka kept throwing his tennis ball onto the work surface, trying to get me to play fetch with him. I should have been smart and put the ball away, because the last time he did it, something happened and made the belt sander bounce. It pulled one of my fingers up between the housing of the sander and the abrasive belt. That was 8 stitches-worth, and then I got in trouble when Marie got home. I was finishing the sanding with one hand, while holding the bandaged one up in the air over my head. What can I say... I wanted to get those stands done so I could setup the new speakers I made. And there was Tonka, rest his soul, still trying to get me to throw the ball for him.

Erik

[NOS Valves]

Erik,

are we going to take this to blood and guts stories..... cool...Oh I have some of those for sure. I once was hanging kitchen cabinets for a customer. I had a table saw setup in the backyard. The customer had children in the 8 year old range and they were playing with the cabinet boxes building a kind of fort out of them in the back yard. I was ripping a filler board for between some cabinets when one of the kids screamed I looked up thinking one of the kids had hurt themselves the next thing I knew my thumb was about a 1/4" shorter! Me being the he-man I was back then I wrapped it up and kept working. Once done for the day I went into the customers bathroom and removed the bandages I turn the water on in the sink (cold) and decided to wash the wound. stuck my thumb in the cold water and received the most horid pain of my life!! Exposed nerve endings... This was much worse then any 500V shock by a very large margin........ But to give you the happy endings I used one of those plastic protective covers on it for like 2 weeks and the entire 1/4" grew back I was amazed! Today you can not even tell it ever happened. I can though since the tip of that thumb is totally lacking an feelings ever since.

Craig

[mike stehr]

Which Thumb? Right or left? I worked in a woodlot for a guy I did yardcare for. He has one those huge wood splitters. The type that has a 40 foot green chain, that will split up to 2 foot diameter logs with a six foot diameter blade. It uses a rather heavy duty splitter, with a hydraulic pusher and table to raise the log up and down.

The boss was running the saw from the doghouse, and I was on the deck splitting the extra smaller pieces by hand that the splitter misses.

Got my right hand caught in the backplate of the splitter, between a piece of wood.

Mashed my index finger pretty much flat, and split the side of it. Mashed a good 1/2" of my thumb to the point where it was just the bit of skin underneath the thumbnail. The rest was just mush, after the thumbnail fell off.

That really, really, really, really hurt. You can blast me with a cattle prod, just don't crush my fingers.....

They sewed it all back together, and I still have 3/4th's the tip of my thumb left. Though it looks like hell, all deformed . It cracks and splits all the time. The thumbnail grew back, but it's all gruesome and drives me nuts.

The tip of it is pretty much dead. It doesn't really bug me in the cold. The index finger has lost a few nerves, and always tingles a bit and really hurts when I'm working in the cold.

I now work at EZ loader boat trailers in the manufacturing dept. A few months ago, a drillpress caught my glove and sucked my left hand in. I ripped my hand out of the glove, which actually hurt my hand worse than the hand grazing the bit. I got lucky and got away with just a nasty looking rugburn on the top of my left hand. Lucky I didn't break it.

I can't afford to do that, I'm runnin' out of hands.

When I was doing hardwood floors, one of the finish carpenters had a router take off and fall off his worktable. And he tried to catch it. Tip first, right into the bottom of his hand.

There was blood everywhere. Good thing we hadn't put down flooring there yet, I'd hate to sand blood out of a floor. I seen the guy's hand a couple weeks later. Talk about tore up....yikes!

[NOSValves]

Mike,

Left thumb. I could go on and on. I stabbed myself in the leg with a exacto knife...sunk the blade all the way in. I gashed down my wrist with the same, the wound looks like I was suicidal. I seen a guy take a worm drive circle saw and nearly cut his leg off right thru the bone and all! now that was gruesome as hell and he barely survived he was loosing blood so fast. It was the craziest few minutes I have ever experienced while we held him down and tied a belt around his leg to cut the blood flow off. I threw up all over the place after that. I had a partner nail his hand to a bottom plate of a wall while we were framing a house. It was real interesting as I used my hammer to pull the 16 penny nail out!!

[jt1stcav]

Ooohh-kay...I think I'm gonna go hurl now...[+o(]

[colterphoto1]

Hi, Michael:

It's cool to see that Klipsch logo under your name! Very neat!

That's my old Nikon close-up lens from my old manual SLR. It was an expensive lens, and was glad it fit on my new digital SLR. These pics were done pretty quickly, and I could have adjusted for light color temp. and stuff, but my camera is another thing I need to spend more time with. It's even more complicated than our digital processor, with a seemingly endless number of features.

These aren't anywhere near the quality of JimT's and that of some others pictures (Edster used to post very nice pictures, too), but I'm working on it.

Thank you for the compliment.

BTW: You're right, some of this is kind of techie, and I was thinking I maybe should have posted it in the Technical forum. Mark and Craig frequent this haunt, though, and their responses were helpful.

Erik

ah, the 60mm macro from the 'olden times'? I've got one two- it's great. I don't know what lighting you're using, but it's very effective.

I saw a guy shoot himself in the KNEECAP with a 16d nail gun. Horrible.

[Erik Mandaville]

Okay, okay....I'm going to turn the corner here.

Mike and Craig: I tried a couple of values, and decided on 3K ohms for this grid stop. The chassis opening is just a little narrow, so it takes time to do this right without scorching everything around the part that needs to be taken out or installed. Only literally a touch of solder is needed for these connections, so that makes things easier.

Here are the 3Ks in place of the former 10Kohm resistors:

[jt1stcav]

Dammit...I think I just swallowed a little bile there...ugh![:S]

[Erik Mandaville]

To get an idea of scale, here's one of my multi-meters over the chassis bottom:

[Erik Mandaville]

And then, finally, the new headphone amp back in the system with a tube linestage. Shawn suggested I try Zone2 on the Lexicon, which I actually forgot existed! That will be interesting to check out tomorrow.

Right now, it's time for some wild Christmas harp music.

Mark and Craig: thanks for your suggestions here. I think I do in fact here a little more 'ting' and 'ping' on cymbals, with maybe a little more burnish -- or maybe just my imagination putting it there. The point is that it's there!

Erik

[jt1stcav]

Okay, now I'm tossing my cookies everywhere! That's one heinous multi-meter! Urp![*-)]

[Erik Mandaville]

Jim:

My dad gave me that many years ago as a present.

Colter: You're close! I was using a 55mm lens.

Erik

[jt1stcav]

Just kiddin' around, Erik...Flukes are cool meters (nicer in yellow, though).[]

Nice job on the li'l 6BQ5 amp. Spend a couple days of work and now you have a new use for a virtually new component![Y]

[Erik Mandaville]

Jim:

I know you're kidding. I agree, the yellow meters are kind of cool!

Erik

[jt1stcav]

Erik, just curious as to what cans you're using with your new headphone amp...

My one brother (chops) just bought a pair of new high-end AKG K701 headphones and a little battery-powered headphone amp (don't recall the make, but it's the size of a stack of credit cards with a volume knob and a bright blue LED), and my other brother (whom you reworked his 6BQ5 amp last year) also bought a new pair of Grado SR325i champaign-colored cans (he's still undecided as to what headphone amp to buy). I still have my old Sony MDR-7506 studio pro headphones from '92 and they're still sounding great IMO!

[mike stehr]

"I gashed down my wrist with the same, the wound looks like I was suicidal. I seen a guy take a worm drive circle saw and nearly cut his leg off right thru the bone and all!"

Ok, I give Craig....that's pretty gross.... That would put a different perspective on one's day.

Remind me to stay clear when you have a exacto knife. []

Isn't the term supressor resistor the same as grid stopper?

[Erik Mandaville]

Mike:

"Isn't the term supressor resistor the same as grid stopper?"

There is something called a suppressor grid in pentodes, which is not related to this. But, yeah, I've also heard the term used in high frequency radio applications. You may have a copy of this book, but The Radio Amateur's Handbook , even though it deals mainly with radio communication, also has some very useful information for audio.

Jim: These are my headphones: