Well I finally got around to building my Bottlehead Crack. It's been a lot of fun, I've a learned a lot and... best of all... it sounds GREAT. Worked on first power up and does not have a bit of noise or hum even running at wide open throttle. Below are some shots of the final assembly. It was built with the Speedball upgrade, Dayton poly output caps and Kimber varistrand wire (PBJ) for the signal lines.
QUESTION: I'm getting slightly different voltage readings at terminals 7 and 9 where the 6080 tube output meets the Speedball big board output and coupling cap input (they read 114V and 110V respectively). I assume this is just the result of tolerance variances in the Speedball big board components. Does this have any effect on the balance between the left/right channels? Cant' hear anything untoward, but you know, OCD.
Still need to finish the wood base, but I'll worry about that when the weather gets warmer. Planning to stain it dark. And yes, I like purple.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i3JRvFq7pyw/VL7E12lc1hI/AAAAAAAACjY/peCZB-1NGwE/w909-h682-no/P1030682.JPG)
Rather than mess around with trying to mount the caps on the top plate, I found it easier to mount them to the sides of the wood base. Of course, that means I have to cut the zip ties anytime I need to pull the top plate off, but hopefully that will not be often.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f6d8cLNr0Eo/VL7E1id989I/AAAAAAAACjU/HUafQZ_33X4/w909-h682-no/P1030673.JPG)
Details on how I mounted those huge caps... eye screws and zip ties. Kind of a pain looping the ties around the caps, but not too bad with a pair of extra-long needle nose pliers.
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-AdJPHVRh90w/VL7E02jXAeI/AAAAAAAACjM/dbWjy6IxtlU/w909-h682-no/P1030672.JPG)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oBEQjSRL9xs/VL7EzzGohmI/AAAAAAAACi8/la01861cDcI/w909-h682-no/P1030671.JPG)
