Foreplay ll and anticipation manuals?

constantine1900 · 4262

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Offline constantine1900

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on: December 12, 2020, 07:41:37 AM
I need to find a manual for the Foreplay ll and if possible the Anticipation upgrade. Hi, My Foreplay ll sat around for almost 15 years not being played with. I put in the Sweetest Whispers and Anticipation. That was years ago. Recently I fired it up. I had music and along with it, hum, pops and clicks going on that weren't there before. I replaced the wiring to get better connections and redo some wonky solders. I decided to remove the Anticipation because one board wouldn't light up. Now I have tubes that glow but absolutely no sound.

I don't want to replace it - I don't believe in that approach and I liked it so much all those years ago - I want to fix it. I am not electronically strong enough to wing it but I can follow a manual just fine. My challenge is that I now don't have a manual for the Foreplay or Anticipation. I have searched as far as I can. Is there any way to get scans of the manuals? Thanks in advance.



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #1 on: December 12, 2020, 01:29:14 PM
They are paper manuals and are pretty awkward as scans.  I'm not sure the manuals would be all that helpful, as they are assembly instructions and don't provide a whole ton of info on debugging. 

Do you have the plastic SW switches or the open phenolic wafer type switches?

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline constantine1900

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Reply #2 on: December 13, 2020, 04:30:15 PM
Hi and thanks for your reply Paul. I think I have the wafer phenolic type that I soldered the resistors onto. Now I'm believing that the sweetest whispers is the stepped volume control. Am I right about that?

The reason for asking for the manual for at least the foreplay is that I've changed something by taking the anticipation off and I'm presuming there was a worrying change made to allow for the anticipation. With a manual I would be able to see what the stock foreplay ll was configured. I remember also that there was a checklist of voltages at different points. Even if I had a diagram of where wires attach at the tubes would be valuable. I'm happy to go step by step in troubleshooting also. I want a working foreplay! 😊

Thanks again for any help.



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #3 on: December 13, 2020, 04:33:54 PM
A1/B1 - 45V
A2/B2 - 0V
A3/B3 - 1.7V
A4/B5/B4/A5 - 49V
A6/B6 - 176V
A7/B7 - 45V
A8/B8 - 50V
A9/B9 - 49V



Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline Paul Joppa

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Reply #4 on: December 13, 2020, 05:34:30 PM
Those old Foreplays has a 100K resistor from pin 1 to pin 6  on both tube sockets, and a 30K resistor from pin 8 to ground. Those resistors were removed when the C4S's were installed. So I speculate that may be your problem.











Paul Joppa


Offline constantine1900

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Reply #5 on: December 19, 2020, 07:01:01 AM
Sorry for the late reply. Thank you both of you for your responses. Both pieces of information are valuable. I will report back once I have made the changes and tested.