Infected! By h1f1 virus (2)Amplifier

I’m still an student then but start equip myself with knowledge from books like What hifi, stereophile, any thing at the book store. After a few years I have decided that I must get myself a valve system.Cash is tight then so my first equipment I bought is AMC CVT 3030A(2nd hand).You can’t believe the goodie in this amplifier. It actually use Siemens el34 as the power tube. The pre is solid state.

The el34 tube is solder directly to a PCB board and when the power tube die, we have to change the whole board (Later version use sovtek el34 with tube socket).The funny thing is this amplifier cramp a pair of fan inside the amplifier. The connector that supplies the tube heater will always give problem. Just bypass the connector and solder directly to the pcb board will eliminate this.

Tweak

I’m just started my hifi journey but I have started to open up the equipment.

1) Disconnect the fan(The tube is able to stand the heat as long the ventilation is ok)
2) Rewire the signal wire (the original signal wire is using zip code wire) I only change the cd input wire.
3) The output wire change to branded speaker wire (wire from the output transformer to the speaker connector)***I send in to the dealer and they charge me rm100 for this-Now you know how green I am at that time.
4) Damp the chassis especially the rear panel. (this panel ring a lot)
After the tweak guess what! I don’t have speaker and cd player. Luckily I have a computer and i use the cd-rom headphone output jack and a splitter interconnect and voila! the source problem is solved.

At that moment I have nothing but a Toshiba mini combo speaker. The mini combo only cost me RM120 and you can imagine how cheap the speaker is. A brief try out give me a real surprise. It actually sound ok.

So immediately I open up the speaker to damp the cabinet. Doing this i found out that this speaker is actually using a single driver. Hmmm…single driver and tube is always a good synergy ( this has always in my mind after this incident).

This make me happy for a while and I start search for my speaker…continue.

KLau