First off, I'm not entirely even sure if this is a 5F1 Champ. I'm saying it is because it has a 5Y3, 6V6, and 12AX7 setup, but whoever built this godforsaken monstrosity quadrupled the capacitance on the filter caps (and left the voltages within 10V of max on the caps), made a really haphazard eyelet board with bus wires that are about 1mm from shorting on other bus wires, and has the worst cable management I've ever seen.
I paid $60 for this in broken condition and I think that was too much.
Anyways, I got it working, after testing all voltages on the tubes and making sure that there wasn't any outstanding voltages that could kill it. However, the heater current was running 4.5V on all tubes. The rectifier tube wasn't working properly, and it was showing about 1/2 the voltage that it should've been on the capacitors. So, I swapped in a solid state rectifier and the voltages to plates and grid are fine now, but the heater current is still 4.5V. I plugged my guitar in and the sound is really low and incredibly distorted (again, I suspect heaters). Also, there's a really high pitched buzzing when I turn the volume knob down to 0, leading me to think that it's shorting or something. What's also weird is that the voltages on the filter caps seem to vary randomly. Last time I turned it on it was 305V, but the time before that was 440V, and the time before that it was sitting at 200V.
So, what is the best course of action now? Start from scratch? Get a new eyelet board and redo wiring? Get a new transformer and slot it in?
I paid $60 for this in broken condition and I think that was too much.
Anyways, I got it working, after testing all voltages on the tubes and making sure that there wasn't any outstanding voltages that could kill it. However, the heater current was running 4.5V on all tubes. The rectifier tube wasn't working properly, and it was showing about 1/2 the voltage that it should've been on the capacitors. So, I swapped in a solid state rectifier and the voltages to plates and grid are fine now, but the heater current is still 4.5V. I plugged my guitar in and the sound is really low and incredibly distorted (again, I suspect heaters). Also, there's a really high pitched buzzing when I turn the volume knob down to 0, leading me to think that it's shorting or something. What's also weird is that the voltages on the filter caps seem to vary randomly. Last time I turned it on it was 305V, but the time before that was 440V, and the time before that it was sitting at 200V.
So, what is the best course of action now? Start from scratch? Get a new eyelet board and redo wiring? Get a new transformer and slot it in?
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