I got really sick of the loose input jack on my amp, so I decided to fix it today.

To give you a point of reference, I also decided to have pot stickers for breakfast with my coffee.

So….basically today started out retarded…and then just kept on truckin’. Dismantling my amp made me realize how impossible it’d be to get back together. The transformers are huge and heavy enough to kill someone if dropped on them, and are magnetically attracted to the huge drivers on the back of the 12″ speakers.

Once I was inside, I realized how cheaply the input jacks were built, and soldered onto the board. First of all, the bushings on the outside of the jack were plastic! Second of all, one wiggle of the jack showed the pins moving freely through their poorly soldered joint/holes.

While I had it apart I decided, for no reason, to take a pic of the tubes:

So, once I had resoldered the joints, cleaned it up a bit, and reassembled it, I gave it a test run. The jack seems to be performing fine.

However, now I am getting microharmonic distortion I can reproduce the sound by tapping the power tubes with my finger. Maybe they just need to be reseated.

Just felt like posting the pics; not really getting into a discussion about what a headphone amp is or why you might need one…sorry for horrible pic quality…these are just small previews:

What you see above is pretty much the power supply functioning (notice the lit LED). Next I have to populate that socket with an opamp and add some stuff. Eventually it will go into an altoids tin with that 9v battery!

Ok, so I snapped some shots of my current ‘test bed’ of the pedal, har-har, before I went to develop the film in my camera. Here we go!

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Here’s the top of the board

current effect on-off switch, since it’s hard to work with the 3pdt footswitch!

The copper-clad underbelly

Oh, and here is what it sounds like.

Well, what can I say? It sounds great. I still have a few more things to do but I figured I’d post some phonecam shots I took during the process:

Here’s the board after etching and drilling:
Top
Bottom

And here we have it with most of the surface mount components on board:
Top
Bottom

More pictures will come once I get some film developed from my minolta (i am so low-tech!) but until then I will post a picture of the pedal in full effect in case you don’t know what it looks like:
BIG RUFF!