Bottlehead Forum
Bottlehead Kits => Legacy Kit Products => Seduction => Topic started by: garrardfisher on October 02, 2012, 02:00:50 PM
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Has anyone has ever noticed this particular sound? The
seduction started out quiet for a month or two after the build,
but now has an itermittent noise that can be temporarily cured by
tapping on the top plate, so I suspect it's a joint. The sound is
much like that of a stylus crossing onto the inner record label, but
softer and staccato and sometimes it has a pattern as in it fades away
by going from pop pop pop to pop....pop...........pop......... ::)
It's only in one channel and I've eliminated tubes and interconnects.
It is definitely the left channel circuit. I have also reflowed
the solder twice on every joint on the left channel. I have not reflowed the
solder elsewhere, and I haven't reflowed the common ground plate.
Is it possible that a component could have been overheated from the solder iron, or is it
definitely a broken joint that I'm just missing? I'm new to tube gear, so I am not familiar with
all the odd sounds they can make.
Any suggestions appreciated!
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Could be either a tube or, somewhat less likely, a cap. Did any of the caps get nicked by the soldering iron?
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The easiest thing to do is clean the tube pins and the socket. Read Question #2 in the FAQ Thread (http://bottlehead.com/smf/index.php/topic,2408.0.html).
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Sounds very much like a tube sound to me. A worn out carbon pot sometimes sounds like that when the volume is turned up or down.
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Could be either a tube or, somewhat less likely, a cap. Did any of the caps get nicked by the soldering iron?
No caps were nicked, but towards the end of the build, I had to use some 96% silver solder, which is tough to work with. It may have caused me to overheat some of the components.
I will try cleaning the socket because I swapped tubes and the problem stayed with the left side.
Thank you for the suggestions.
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Yow, 96% no way that will work, short of using a torch. Pick off any loose bits, then as there is silver involved. Get some 2% silver electronic solder. The Kester 2% is excellent, and hit those connections again...John
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I would go with Johns advice, re-wet with a 2% silver lead based. But Im assuming a 4% silver solder was used. Ive never even seen 96% silver content solder.
96% Tin / 4% Silver is a bear ... basically plumbing solder but also seen it sold as lead free electronics solder.
Lead based 4% silver is do-able. I have a small container of it and it's not too bad but I stick with my 2% Multicore if Im using silver solder.
Anyway ... +1 on what John said. ;)
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He mis-typed. It has to be 4% silver, 96% whatever. We used silver solder for thermocouples at Alcoa. They had to be assembled with an oxy-acetoline torch.
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Well, thanks again for the advice. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to give some input.
And yes, I definitely mis-spoke on the percentage of silver in my solder. I've not done much
soldering in my life, so I'm not good with the terminology. ;)
I wanted to check back in and give a status. I think I may have located the problem.
I re-wet the solder on one of the snap-in power supply caps that
are difficult to reach and therefore I probably didn't solder them sufficiently the first time.
I'll keep ya posted if the issue comes back (like it did once before), but I think I got it this time.