Crack pre-Speedball

[katoosh]

Hello and let me first thank everyone for creating and nurturing a great community! By using the forum, I successfully transitioned from trailer wire soldering to more demanding tasks!  Ha. The build went near perfectly and all values were within range. And fairly neat. Like others, I wanted to listen for a while and get the tubes burnt in. Sound FANTASTIC and I’m fairly blown away!

But.... My I can only turn my volume up (maybe) 20% or so till volume through Drop 6** in too loud. No problem-FAQ #3 has all you need to know.

My question is this: will speedball have any effect on overall volume? Will I need to add the components to shift the effective range of the volume? Or will I still need to do the fixes outlined in FAQ #3? My guess is that they are completely be independent of each other, but our local electronics shop (Al Lasher, thanks for 35 years!) is closing so no immediate access to the goods necessary. Also, balance is (to my ear) perfect even at the lower range of the sweep.

Thanks in advance! I am so pleased with this amp. Everyone who loves music should have one. It changes how I perceive music. This is a milestone in my journey for high quality affordable music.

[Thermioniclife]

Perhaps your source equipment has a high output voltage. Try the crack with a different source. A 2vac output on a CD player, Dac, or Sat radio is somewhat considered standard, not always. I do not know what your source is so this is conjecture. You can play a song or a
test tone perhaps white noise and measure the output ac voltage coming out of your source. If it averages out to 1-2 Vac that's pretty much standard. Not to many years ago some manufacturers started to raise the output voltage of source equipment to 5 Vac  that's a pretty hot output. There are inline attenuators that you can place on the inputs of the Crack to knock down a hot signal to a more acceptable level. Harrison is a brand that is commonly used. I can not offer a recommendation on the level of attenuation but a safe guess may be -12 db you may need more.

[Colonl_Charisma]

The Speedball mod will increase the gain. So it will technically have an effect on the volume. When I have my solid-state on lo-gain, I have a very wide volume range that I can adjust for my ears. When I switch to hi-gain, however, the volume range is significantly decreased because adjusting the volume knob just a little bit is too loud for my ears.

I would recommend doing the resistor mod as outlined in FAQ #3. I had a very similar experience as you where I was unable to adjust the volume because it was too loud. With the Speedball and resistor mods installed, my comfortable volume range is between 9-12 o'clock depending on the recording of the song.

Hope that helps!

[katoosh]

Sounds like the additional resistors are the way to go. Thanks.

[tim273]

One of the mods you can do that helps this is using a different volume pot like the alps blue velvet 100k pot.  I have one on my crack the biggest difference is the better control of low level volume.  It does a very nice job slowing raising the volume so you can listen at lower levels.

Another good one is the Audio Note pot, but it's a lot more expensive: https://www.partsconnexion.com/ANVPOT-81914.html