Quickie Impressions, Comments and Questions

[FMRadioman]

I am a first time builder and decided to start with the Quickie. The Quickie took me a little bit over a week to complete working 1 to 2 hours per night. I realized that my soldering skills need some work, I have fat fingers and my eye site is not what is used to be. I worked very slowly and caught most of my mistakes as I reviewed my work for each step but the Quickie worked beautifully the first time. I do get the bells ringing when I touch the controls but they sound good too.   It was a bunch of fun and frustrating at times due to my issues mentioned earlier.

I used the Bottlehead cabinet but opted for a lower height Hammond chassis to give me easier access in my low entertainment center. I may try to cut a Bottlehead cabinet in half since I like the wood.

Do the tubes light up that I should see them like on a unit powered by AC?

Other than the unit not working, how do you notice when the batteries are running low? Will I be continuously turning the unit up to get the volume that I am accustomed to?

Do either the 9V or D cells wear out faster than the other?

Is battery life effected by how loud I play my music?

[Karl5150]

I'm using my customized Quickie with rechargeable batteries and a 9 pin hook-up from the remote battery pack to the Quickie. When the D-cells are too low to drive the filaments I get static noise in the channel that is low, the same as if I don't have the 9 pin connector secure. The Li ion batteries go from fine to not working pretty quickly, with a graininess to the of sound prior to failure. 
The tubes don't really glow, nor do they get warm. 
It is my understanding that the PJCCS is supposed to address the loss of volume, etc. as the voltage drops.

[FMRadioman]

Thanks for the information Karl.

Now for an update. I began noticing some issues with my Quickie after use and I jumped the gun by saying that it all worked fine the first time. I do have an issue but I think that I see the problem and will have to do some re-soldering tonight and I need 4 new 9V batteries.

In addition, I forgot to mention and give thanks to Cary Chin in my original post. I met Cary at the 2016 Burning Amp where he was showing and discussing the Quickie. Cary's enthusiasm and information about the Quickie is what led me to trying this kit.  Thank you Cary.