JUST FINISHED THE QUICKIE

[coca]

I purchased a quickie kit some time ago, and started working on it right away. As usual, other projects took priority, and the Quickie was abandoned until last night, when I finished it. I took it over to a friend's place whom I recently introduce to the Bottlehead family, and he, with another newcomer had purchased, and built Quickies very recently. Well! After listening to my friends quickie for a few weeks, I did not expect to hear what I heard from mine. The sound was huge, and I jumped a few times when Hearing the dynamics from this little guy. My friend's quickie did not sound like that when he first turned his on. This was a great experience. Thank you Bottlehead, for a great unit. The build experience was terrific. I did run into a couple of problems though. The first was my fault, The second had a problem with one tube not going all the way into its socket. There were two pin holes that were somehow partialy blocked. I think it was an alignment thing, and I cracked the top of one socket while trying to solve the problem. They are clear now,  However, I will be purchasing another kit soon, and will arrange to purchase another socket at that time. Right now things are sounding great. I will post pictures later.

Bernie.

[boulos]

What's the difference between your unit and his?

[coca]

The biggest difference might be that I have an earlier kit which uses a 1000uf capacitor across the cathode resister, and he has a later kit that uses a 150uf across the cathode resistor. This of cource is speculation on my part. The other thing that might be hapening is: I made the same mistake twice by inserting the plate resister in the place of the grid stopper resister (dumb) and had to finally disgard the plate resister when it came to putting it in place, and had to install a different 4k resister. In fact, it was a 4.3k one.The new resister is a very special hi- stab wire wound resister, that I have thousands of. They were once used in submarine amplifiers that were used in telephone cable networks that lay on the bottom of the ocean floor. At least, that is  what I have been led to believe. I only know that they sound great.. Once again, this is speculation on my part. The quickie has lots of burn in time on it now, and I am loving it. I plan on building two more that will all be slightly different from each other. I just have a thing about tube pre amps.

Bernie.