[HELP] - Right channel has intermittent low-whine

mtheshark90 · 616

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Offline mtheshark90

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on: February 24, 2018, 03:20:22 PM
Have had my crack for over a year now without any real issues. Today I noticed that the right channel intermittently produces a very very low volume but high pitch whine. It occurs about every 30s or so, lasts anywhere from 5s to a minute, and is so low that I'm not sure if it's been there all along and never noticed or if it's new. Now that I have noticed it though, I feel like I'm constantly hearing it and it's driving me crazy.

-It does not increase with volume
-Does not seem to change with tilt of the amp
-Removing cell phone from area has no effect
-Turning off the PC and DAC do not affect it
-Happens with multiple headphones


So I'm left to believe something is wrong with the amp itself, or it's somehow picking up interference from something. And it's only the right channel.

Has anyone ever experienced this?



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #1 on: February 24, 2018, 05:44:37 PM
Loose solder joints, unsoldered joints, and loose hardware could cause strange intermittent issues.   I'd try tapping on each tube when the noise is happening to see if physically jostling the amp changes the nature of the noise.

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline Doc B.

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Reply #2 on: February 25, 2018, 09:13:39 AM
Could be interference or oscillation or both. The place to start is cleaning the tube pins. Didn't we just have another thread about the same kind of noise a couple days ago?

Dan "Doc B." Schmalle
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Bottlehead Corp.