Rattling in left channel - Crack + Speedbal

[HMF]

Hello all,

I finished building my Bottlehead Crack with Speedball back in January and have been listening to it mostly issue free since then.

Over the last few weeks (3-4) I've noticed some rattling specifically in the left channel with bassy parts. Typically I can turn the amp off and back on and it goes away.

However, today I turned my amp on to listen to some music and the rattling was immediately present. I have not been able to get it to go away. I've also tried a different tube, but without any success.

I know it isn't the headphones, as they sound excellent on anything else.

I'm not sure where to begin troubleshooting, other than trying a different tube, which I've done.

Hopefully someone out there has encountered a similar issue and can provide some guidance or point me in the right direction to resolve this issue. I miss my yummy Crack.

Thanks a lot!

HMF

[Paul Birkeland]

A noise like this in one channel is probably a flaky solder joint that gets a little overwhelmed by signal.

I would reflow all your solder joints to start and see if that helps.

Also, you can run the amp with a lot of signal coming into it, then measure the voltages at terminals 1, 5, 7, and 9 and check if any of those are way higher or way lower than normal.

PB