LED and Voltage Issues [resolved]

[pickles3201]

Hi, so a long time ago I tried assembling a Bottlehead Crack+Speedball. I honestly don't remember if my crack pre-speedball worked or not since 1. I don't recall hearing a negligible difference and 2. there was a second LED by the 9-pin socket that I remember not knowing existed (so it probably wasn't lit?). At the time since I missed the second LED, I thought it worked and so I went along with the speedball upgrade. So here we are present day.

If you see my previous post history I posted about resistance failure checks on pins 7, 9, B3, and B6 about 2 years ago. I recently did another resistance check, and those 4 pins still read as over limit. But I actually searched it up, and I saw one post where Paul said it was fine because the Speedball changes the resistances. So are these 4 pins no longer a concern then?

And for the LEDs, a couple of the LEDs were actually on until I 'resoldered' pin A7 (voltage failure fix attempt) by adding what is probably considered too much solder, and so now no LEDs light up.
It's pretty late right now so I'll try to remove the excess solder tomorrow, but is my crack cucked or is it completely plausible that too much solder on one pin could lead to all LEDs not lighting up?

Assuming that the above problem is fixable, I did have some pictures of the LEDs before I screwed it up with the solder.
The 2 LEDs by the 9-pin socket were lit, and the 4 LEDs on the big circuit board were lit, but fairly dim in comparison to the 2 LEDs on the small circuit board. And as you can see by the image, the other 2 LEDs on the small circuit board don't light up.

In terms of voltage for the small board (before solder screw up), OA and OB were both at like 375 volts, so that's why I tried resoldering A7 (voltage was about 2 volts) but not A2 (voltage was 0). After putting a bunch of solder it's still at 375 volts. I'm definitely removing the excess, but I'm curious (assuming that removing it works) as to why too much would cause such an issue.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[Paul Birkeland]

In terms of voltage for the small board (before solder screw up), OA and OB were both at like 375 volts

This tells me that your stock Crack build didn't work properly.  Are both black wires at the headphone jack captured by solder?

Can you list the voltages for:

Small board OA, OB, IB, IA.
Big board OA, OB.

I would need to see a picture of what's hooked up on your 9 pin socket, since you seem to indicate that maybe you only have one LED there.

[pickles3201]

I'm pretty sure both headphone jack black wires are captured by solder. Just in case, I added more. And before the weird LED non-lighting up error, I did have 2 LEDs lighting up at the 9-pin socket.

So I tried removing the solder from pin A7 but I don't have flux and the solder wick wasn't working. I'm honestly so confused as to why most LEDs were lighting up (save for a few) but then after adding solder to pin A7, none of the LEDs work. Before that happened, my voltages were basically fine. So I'm not sure what happened.

My resistance checks are fine, but the voltage checks are definitely not great. There is no voltage in pins 1-5 which probably explains why some LEDs weren't lighting. I sear I just added solder to A7 and somehow everything got screwed over. So now the previous 375 volt measurements don't really matter anymore because right now my Crack is kinda cucked.

I also have to go back to college soon, so I'm not sure how much more I can work on this unfortunately. On an unrelated note, will the repair service be available anytime soon? I'm slowly feeling discouraged from the wear of debugging haha.



Here are my current voltage measurements:

Small Board:
OA: 0
OB: 0
IB: 0
IA: 0



Big Board:
For some reason, depending on where I place my probe on the solder, it will either read 0 volts or some weird voltage. I have no idea why.
OA: 0 or 50
OB: 0 or 103



1: 0
2: 0
3: 0
4: 0
5: 0
6: 0
7: 105
8: 0
9: 47
10: 0

[Thermioniclife]

It appears that one led on the A socket is miswired. It should be connected between pin A3 and the center terminal. It seems to look like it is connected to pin A1 and pin A2 or A3, It is hard to tell because the wiring is obscuring the connections.

[pickles3201]

Yeah sorry for the bad photo. It was mostly just to show that I had both of them there, but the angle is definitely pretty bad. One LED is going from A3 to center, and the other LED is going from A8 to center.

[Paul Birkeland]

You had 375V initially, now you have 0V.  Either you have a blown fuse or a very, very loose connection.

The presence of the 375V in your measurements tells me there's a loose connection in your amp and it's absolutely critical that you stop focusing on the LEDs themselves and reflow the solder joints in the rest of the amp.  You don't get voltages that are higher than what's supposed to be in the kit unless you have a loose solder joint or you miswire the power transformer (which will cause the power supply caps to fail immedaitely).

So you have solder joint issues, 100%.  Without first resolving these issues and seeing 170-200V on the IA/IB terminals on the small PC board (which is connected to B2/B5, as well as terminals 2 and 4), your LEDs won't light. Your LEDs can also not light up if the tubes aren't glowing, and that's another common issue that has nothing to do with the LEDs themselves.

If you resolder the LEDs themselves too much, they will melt and need to be replaced.  But again, don't focus on the LEDs, you have other issues elsewhere. 

Do you still have the 22.1K and 3K resistors?  Removing the Speedball and putting the amp back to stock could be helpful at this point.

[pickles3201]

Sorry for the late reply. I'm back from college and just reflowed most of the joints.
What's great is that the LEDs are back to lighting up again, but I still have a few voltage issues.
Unfortunately, I no longer have the old resistors anymore. But here are my new voltages: (o = good, x = bad)


Crack:
x  1: 151
o  2: 162
o  3: 0
o  4: 162
o  5: 64

o  6: 0
x  7: 151
o  8: 0
o  9: 92
o  10: 0


Small Board:
x  OA: 151
o  IA: 162
o  B-A/B: 0
o  IB: 161
o  OB: 64


Big Board:
o  OA: 93
x  OB: 154
o  G: 0
o  B+: 166


Pins from one of the troubleshoots (both are 0, which is correct):
o  A2: 0
o  A7: 0

[pickles3201]

Ok so after reflowing/adding solder to some of my joints, somewhere around the transformer (probably one of the huge resistors) started smoking. I tried reflowing/adding solder to other joints again to try to get rid of the smoking, and this time for some reason R1A on the small board basically burned up (mini fire lol).
Now I'm not sure what to do.

Any idea on how soon the repair service will be available? I'm getting pretty frustrated at this point and would just like to get it to work.

[Paul Birkeland]

You can contact queen(at)bottlehead(dot)com and she can set you up with a repair service provided all the parts you've used to build it are parts that came from us.  If there are sockets, caps, resistors, pots, etc. that are aftermarket parts, you'll need to take those out first and install the stock parts.  Be sure to provide a link to this thread when asking for the repair service since we are no longer offering repair services without at least an attempt at getting help here first.

The 151V at terminal 1 would have had me asking if both LEDs on your 9 pin socket were working and if they weren't there would have been further checks. The smoking power supply resistor tends to indicate that there's a problem with the large Speedball board since the 9 pin socket and associated parts can't draw enough current to heat up those power supply resistors very much.

[pickles3201]

Unforunately, I no longer have the original pot that came with the amp.
Is there any way I can still send it in (remove new pot) or can I pay for a new pot when I send it in?
Thanks

[Paul Birkeland]

Can you post a photo of the build?  If you have something like an Alps Blue wired in without a PC board supporting the pins, that will have to come out during the repair process and be replaced by the stock pot, and I would be relatively certain that pins will snap off and the pot will no longer be usable.  In fact a snapped off pin on a pot could cause the problems you're having...

[pickles3201]

No I just have a stepped attenuator that I bought but it has like "cups" which I guess you fill with solder and put the wire in.
I will say that I did some very jank things, like soldering a ground wire to another black wire to extend it so it could reach the attenuator's ground terminals.
I know that the wiring is not great and everything is really messy, but unfortunately I was pretty young and eager to finish it so I guess I forgot about neatness. I also included a picture of the burnt speedball resistor and one of the ceramic-covered resistors that ended up cracking later.

Is my build still valid for the repair service? Thanks

[Paul Birkeland]

That pot will have to come out.  I'll put it in the box with the repaired Crack. 

[pickles3201]

Ok thanks for all the help! I'll be sure to send an email to get things set up, I appreciate it

[Fattergator]

I’m sure loads of newbies have done this, but I have just broken one of the HLMP-6000s whilst wiring the 9-pin socket.

I live in the UK and I’m struggling to find a replacement which looks like the one which came with the kit.

I can only find replacement HLMP-6000s which are ‘domed’ as opposed to the flat square. There is one on uk eBay from Avago and one on Farnell’s website which is HLMP-6000 Standard Red, I’m just not sure they have the same properties.

From the data sheet:

Forward voltage 1.4 to 1.6, max 2.0

Reverse breakdown voltage 5.0 to 12.0

Any help with finding a replacement part in the UK would be much appreciated.

FG