Buzz kill 120hz and 60hz

the thermionic watercooler

Buzz kill 120hz and 60hz

Postby Blair » Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:04 am

Okay, I built these and posted about them a few months ago. They sounded great until I finished a stereo version. The stereo version is dead quiet and on par with any audiophile amp out there in the same power range.

I cannot kill the hums at all. Any suggestions. These run 459v on the Kt88 plates, and 159v on the 12AU7 plates. The 12AU7s have about 5v on the cathodes, and the KT88s have about 42v. Any suggestions? I deliberately cut the filament wire on the 12AU7 to see if it was a filament hum, but got nothing so far. Here is the top layout, and I'll take pice of the bottoms so you can see them tomorrow:

Image

Here is the bottom:

Image

Thanks for any help guys,

Blair
Blair
KT88
 
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Postby TomMcNally » Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:54 am

Blair ...

You have some serious grounding issues.

The power supply has grounds connected right into the audio path - for example, the capacitor for the driver tube is grounded right to the volume control, the main high voltage ground kind of connects to the input stage. You seriously need to run a bus wire, like a piece of # 12 house wire, insulated from ground. I'd run it pretty much down the center and make it about as long as the distance as end to end of the tube sockets.

On one end ... connect the center tap of the plate transformer and the negative side of all of the filter capacitors, very close together on the bus. Keep any audio grounds down at the other end. Use an insulated phono jack, and shielded wire to connect to the volume control. Get rid of that speaker ground on the input jack - that helps create a ground loop.

Basically now, you have the negative side of the power supply connected to the input of the amplifier, and the music is fighting the hum.

Take a look at some of the pictures on my website, and look at the grounding schemes. Remember - keep power supply grounds together, and audio grounds together and don't mix them closely.

http://tmamps.com

... tom
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Postby Blair » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:56 pm

Tom,

I emailed you on your personal email. I cannot get my village photos account to work for some reason. Thanks for any help!

Blair
Blair
KT88
 
Posts: 1272
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:22 am


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