We've received a case from customer on upgrading his 300B SET - changing Alps Blue Velvet to stepped attenuator, change stock output transformer to Precision Wind Z11 OPT, and upgrade some of the components.
Upon opening the chassis, it turned out to be a nightmare! At the end, as the design was too bad, owner preferred to just repair the amplifier and sell it. Original funds will be used to build a brand new J&K 300B SET instead (Like!).
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| 300B SET |
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| Vintage GEC U52 Rectifier |
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| Looks fine from far but is a nightmare! |
It uses capacitor input rectification but the 1st capacitor connected to the rectifier is at least 470uf x 2 in series, resulting a whopping 235uf for the GEC U52! Maximum value for capacitor input is 47uf - 60uf. Please say hello to the GEC U52 tube before it says bye bye.
DC is used for indirectly heated tubes - unnecessary. AC is fine and is dead quiet. AC sounds better too. Do not hide the design flaws by using DC filament supply. 300B filament supply is just using a bridge + 10,000uf capacitor - high ripple and bad for 300B filament longevity. Such DC supply does not sound good too.
Cheap source selector is used. Period.
Wrong design of how the 5692/6SN7 is connected. It uses only 1 triode from the double-triode but it is wired the same for both sockets. It should be alternated so that the tubes can be swapped to utilize the unused side of the double triode.
I better stop here before everybody stops buying this amplifier.
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| Trios that need to be changed as they leak and bloated - going to explode soon. |
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| Change Blue Velvet to J&K precision matched stepped attenuator with SMT resistors for shortest signal path. |
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| One of the cold solder joints (tonnes of them!) - touched and it just snapped off. |
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| Original condition - coupling cap is mounted with double sided tape! |
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| Good parts are used but 1st modder workmanship is pure rubbish! |
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| Original: wires are "glued" using solder onto the IEC socket. What sort of rubbish this is... |
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| Parallel rectifier - bad design. |
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| Bloated trios. |
10th May 2014
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These comments are valuable. Most of the bad things i have heard about Chinese SETs is from second-hand, but reliable DIY folk. It's the same story. Stolen design; faulty implementation of the stolen design (if 25uf is good, 125uf must be better....no matter where); sloppy build---all in a lovely case with vintage picture pretty (if wrong) lay-out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for publishing this. More grist for the mill.
Thank you for your comment. Well said.
ReplyDeleteBuyers need to beware of what they're getting. What's inside is equally as important as what is outside. :)