I had mixed success resoldering. The voltage measured correctly after I resoldered. All LED’s were glowing; so I played an album and it worked. Success – or so I thought. The next day the Eros did not work. Nothing.
Rather than continue to blindly troubleshoot the issue, which seemed more involved than my skill set, I decided to take up Paul’s offer to stop by Bottlehead. I am fortunate that Bottlehead is only a couple miles away. Paul decided to put it on the bench rather than just provide me with parts. He noticed a few of my solder joints on the power supply were flakey. He explained how over time those joints could affect the operation and why the pre may not be working. Paul replaced a couple damaged parts, remeasured, but decided there were more unknowns causing the pre to behave unpredictably so it would be better in the long run and less time consuming to rebuild the shunt regulator ps board. It was awe inspiring to see someone that proficient at his craft build a board. While I’ll never get to his skill level, I now have a better understanding of proper building techniques, which will carry over to my next Bottlehead kit. I got the Eros home and it is again musical magic. Many thanks to Paul, Doc, Eileen and everyone at Bottlehead. The level of support from them is without equal. Truly a first class operation!
As a first time builder, I expected this kit to be a learning experience and that maybe there would be some issues. The Eros is a challenging kit for a novice, but with patience, the well written instruction manual, guidance from the forums and support from Bottlehead, I was able to build a really nice sounding phono preamp that meets my requirements and IMO exceeds many phono pre’s that are far more costly. It worked beautifully for nine months. The problems I recently encountered were most likely from my fundamental building mistakes, which I have since learned how to correct. I look forward to building more Bottlehead kits. Thanks to all on this forum for your guidance.
