Quickie scratchiness

[denti alligator]

My Quickie began making a scratchy kind of sound today. I've made no changes recently. It's in both channels. I've switched and switched out tubes. I've cleaned tube sockets, RCAs, volume pot, and some of the soldered connections with de-oxit. Volume seems to have little effect, though it does change the scratchiness slightly. What could be causing this? (Batteries are new-ish.)

[ALL212]

I think the last time I had a quickie and it was scratchy....

wait for it...


I had to visit the doctor and get meds for it.   

[Paul Joppa]

... (Batteries are new-ish.)

Measure the battery voltage. "Newish" is only relevant if you know the batteries were well made and properly stored and transported and have no manufacturing defects. There is no way to know those things.

If the voltages are in fact OK, then it's most likely a problematic solder joint. If you hang out at this forum, you already knew that ...

[Wanderer]

After you check the battery voltage try cleaning the battery terminals.

I have gotten some noise from dirty battery contracts. In my case it is only right channel and was cleaned up by playing with the D cell contacts.
 

[denti alligator]

Not the batteries. I reflowed some of the joints, and it appears only to be in the left channel now. I'm pretty sure it's one of the rectifier diodes, which I had broken upon initial install (http://bottlehead.com/smf/index.php?topic=3378.0). I soldered it back together... now I think it's kaputt. Problem is: I can't find my replacement.

[denti alligator]

OK, replaced the rectifier diode. Same scratchiness. Both channels.

So I re-flowed all the solder joints. But it appears I wasn't being careful because now I can't get one of the tubes into the socket. Appears to be one of the socket holes only. What do I do to clear out whatever might be blocking it? I assume it's solder, so I've tried putting some solder wick down the socket and heating it up. Nothing.

[Paul Birkeland]

It's somewhat difficult to get solder out of a tube socket pin hole.  You can try using gravity and heat to let it slide back out.

Which rectifier diode did you replace?  The PJCCS has a diode in it, but not the Quickie itself.

-PB

[denti alligator]

Yeah, one of the ones on the PJCCS.

Well, I've contacted Eileen about getting a socket replacement. So once I've got it running again I'll commence with troubleshooting.

What's interesting about this all is that I've now been spending time with the SEX without a Quickie in front of it, and I'm surprised at how much more I prefer it with the Quickie. I'm really missing it!

[denti alligator]

Everything was back to normal when suddenly yesterday the left channel went out, then magically came back. Same thing this morning. It went out. I flipped it over and checked all voltages, batteries, etc. Everything checked out. Turned it back on. It worked again (I hadn't changed anything). Then briefly the sound got bad in the left channel, but now it's fine. Only thing I had to do when repairing over a week ago was to extend the wire going from the battery to the center lug of the power switch. I had damaged it and needed to cut it and add a bit to lengthen it. That's on the left channel only. Could this be messing up the power some how?

EDIT: Just went in and out again for about 1 second...  I haven't touched it.

...and after working fine for about 10 minutes it just dropped out for about 15-20 seconds. Now back...

FINAL EDIT: I resoldered the wire I had to extend and have been listening for about an hour without dropouts. Appears to have been the problem.