It was very mild and dry yesterday and I managed to escape for a bit 
So, the first job was to connect some nice long wires to the various places where I'd chopped the originals. Next I set the whole lot up on the bench and interconnected the wires with choc blocks - see attached.
Then it was just a matter of plugging in to the Variac and turning it up slowly, while monitoring the ht and heater voltages. I only ran it up to 220v input as the capacitors are only rated at 275v. I did that over a couple of hours by the end of which the ht was at 270v and the Heaters at 4.2v. Bearing in mind that I hadn't put the valves in I thought that was pretty good to start with. In fact I was congratulating myself that things were going splendidly and the next step was to install the valves when I noticed a wisp of smoke from the main chassis. Sure enough one of the resistors is getting hotter than I think it should. I'm not certain where it is in the circuit yet, as at that stage I was recalled to base to assist with Christmas things, and I haven't managed to escape again yet.
A few extra comments:-
The mains switch works fine.
The eagle eyed will notice that the AVO 8 is switched to AC, despite the fact that it's measuring the ht. I wondered why it gave a strange reading when I changed ranges.
There were encouraging scratching noises from the speaker when I was poking about with the AVO
So, next job is find out what the problem is with the resistor and try the valves.
Alan
So, the first job was to connect some nice long wires to the various places where I'd chopped the originals. Next I set the whole lot up on the bench and interconnected the wires with choc blocks - see attached.
Then it was just a matter of plugging in to the Variac and turning it up slowly, while monitoring the ht and heater voltages. I only ran it up to 220v input as the capacitors are only rated at 275v. I did that over a couple of hours by the end of which the ht was at 270v and the Heaters at 4.2v. Bearing in mind that I hadn't put the valves in I thought that was pretty good to start with. In fact I was congratulating myself that things were going splendidly and the next step was to install the valves when I noticed a wisp of smoke from the main chassis. Sure enough one of the resistors is getting hotter than I think it should. I'm not certain where it is in the circuit yet, as at that stage I was recalled to base to assist with Christmas things, and I haven't managed to escape again yet.
A few extra comments:-
The mains switch works fine.
The eagle eyed will notice that the AVO 8 is switched to AC, despite the fact that it's measuring the ht. I wondered why it gave a strange reading when I changed ranges.
There were encouraging scratching noises from the speaker when I was poking about with the AVO
So, next job is find out what the problem is with the resistor and try the valves.
Alan
