Neil....what was the solution?
Alex
Hey there Alex.
I reheated/re-soldered nearly all of the joints on the Speedball parts.
I re-soldered the 3U and 3L - couple other lower joints - between 2L and 7L i think.
I had to remove the two capacitors and flip them over to make the long board for the Speedball fit - so I also re-soldered those, a few times, and the lower joints since they got pretty hot as well.
I removed both tubes and reinserted probably 6 times and gave each one a very minor twist in each socket - i think this did nothing, but was really trying to find the source of the cracking/popping.
I flipped the system guts-up and powered it on with "crappy" headphones plugged in and poked around with a chopstick. It was very hard to tell what was normal popping/cracking and what might have been chop-stick-poke induced - but it did seem like it was coming from any one of those silver caps - the ones that were like 2920 or 2202 or whatever - so i made sure to add fresh solder and really get them done with better joints.
I actually still had popping, loud sharp aggressive popping, even after all this.... so, I left the Crack turned on but with no audio input and no headphones plugged in - just let it sit turned on for a good 8 hours. I came back, plugged audio and headphones in, sounded amazing - crystal clear, no weird sounds at all. I unplugged the headphones and turned the volume pot from 0-100% 5 or 6 times, put headphones in and very slowly did the same thing - sounded great. The Speedball upgrade made the Crack completely dead silent up till about 95% volume on the pot - really impressive - also made the crack louder, by quite a good and noticeable amount.
Wishing I did this mod YEARS ago! Can't wait to try some different tubes out. I wish I could order them straight from Bottlehead!