Popping in left channel when I tap Bottlehead Crack

[zbells]

Hi All,

First off I'm a noob and just built the crack.  It sounds great and I love it! However when I tap on the Bottlehead Crack (specifically around the headphone jack or a hard tap on the table, I get a popping in the left channel of my headphones.  I know from a bit of research that it's probably a bad connection.  With the popping occurring mostly when I tap around the headphone jack and the popping in the left channel, can I assume that it's probably a bad connection on the left channel headphone jack or is this not a wise assumption? Just don't want to go resoldering a bunch of joints if I don't need to. Thanks!

[Doc B.]

Just don't want to go resoldering a bunch of joints if I don't need to.

We see this comment a lot. If you sent the amp to us for repair we would reflow all the joints that might be the problem. On a Crack I usually reflow every joint. It takes about 10 minutes if I take the time to hit the candy drawer halfway through. That said, if you look at 57.3% of the threads on this forum you will see PB telling someone to reflow the black wire connections on the headphone jack. That is the most common bad joint.

[zbells]

Hi Doc, I appreciate the help!!!  Unfortunately I'm a guber and everything I try to reflow around the headphone jack seems to make it worse - Got no sound out of the left channel for a bit and now it gets very loud pops and hissy in the left channel, although it seems to settle down a bit after a while (until I tap it again). I guess I'll try to reflow all the joints I can get at tomorrow and run the ohm and voltage tests again. 

[zbells]

[SOLVED] Pretty much.  After many hours of resoldering every joint, and fiddling with every connection, I discovered what my issue was (or at least one of them).  The nine-pin socket wasn't making a good connection with the 12AU7 tube.  Every now and then the connection will still go bad and sound will slowly fade from the left channel and I need to mess around with the tube to get the connection solid again.  Otherwise the sound is great and even tapping on the crack doesn't produce the pop it used to in the left channel (probably fixed that with all my resoldering). 

Is there any more permanent solution to fixing the connections in the nine-pin socket so that I don't have to jerk around the 12AU7 tube to get it working again when it? Thanks!