Crackling, popping, etc,.etc.

[arugula]

good to hear! I am determined to get this thing to work - for one thing the sound is just amazing and I have a great time despite the lightning sound effects in the background of my music. Will approach this one segment at a time and redo/replace parts until I get it. First try the chopstick trick. Thanks million for your help.

[hoy83]

The solder joint at 3L looks like it hasn't been well flowed out.

A strategy that can be helpful is to take a wooden chopstick and run the amp with some cheap headphones plugged in, then poke around the circuit to see if you can create the noise by poking something specific, then you can focus your efforts there.

Good day sir, would like to ask how to do the chopsticks procedure. Do you flip the chassis on it's back, plug a pair of cheap headphones under the wooden housing and plug a dac/source to the RCA, and then poke around with the chopsticks on all the joints to find where the problem is (I assume if there's a crack then I would re-solder/re-flow that particular joint? Am I getting it right? Thanks.