So, I spent some time changing out the capacitors (well, the electrolytic and the damaged ceramic one) on the Armstrong 227M amp that I nabbed from ebay. It’s a mono valve amp, so I’ve also made up a rather nice little 1kohm inside the plug shells stereo-to-mono phono lead. Anyhow…
The new capacitors made the old ones look as huge and sad as they were:
And we went from this:
to this:
There was a bit of entertainment as I tried to work out which end was positive. The old axial capacitors have one end that’s red – easy. However, what I didn’t notice when I took the first one out was that the cans on them are opposite ways around. So whilst the positive was at the top of the shot, in all three cases, the cans on the capacitors were deceptively confusing. Which led to me putting in-and-out the first capacitor 2 times before I settled on the correct answer – which, obviously, was the way round I’d started with.
I’m glad I didn’t turn it on with the original caps in, anyhow, because:
I also had some entertainment replacing the dual capacitor, too. Because I thought I’d ordered a can capacitor, but now discover the reason it’s so much cheaper than the posh audiophile can capacitors is… it’s not a can capacitor.
Still, careful positioning of one of the legs, and some handy locating tape…
(Don’t worry, the tape’s long gone now. It was just holding it until I could get it nicely positioned.
I’ve still got one other capacitor to replace, it’s another electrolytic. Unfortunately, I assumed that, in that first shot, the three capacitors were the same (I could only read two of them). Being as it’s a mono amp, I’m not expecting symmetry anyway. It turns out it’s not. It’s a 16uF 350 volt part (now replaced with a 22uF 350 volt electrolytic). Thankfully I had one of those to use elsewhere in the amp. So that other one is still lurking, waiting to go bang. But having waited so patiently since obtaining the amp, I couldn’t resist at least trying it today…
And it’s lush, warm, valve yummyness. I know that the nice warm way that valve amps sound is that they’re distorting. They’re not producing a truly accurate representation of the analogue data being waved at them. But boy is it nice to hear.
I need to pick up a two and three mm plug, because at the moment the wires are just stuffed into the speaker transformer… which isn’t right!
It’s huge, and I’m not that fond of the way it sits on the desk. I wanted just an amp, and it’s a tuner-amp. I’ve ripped out it’s audiophile heart and replaced posh can capacitors with cheap-ass off the shelf electrolytics. But it’s still nice :)
Which is good, because a week ago I ran, at low speed, into my neighbours car. I can no longer mock my friend who drove into my Enfield. I thought I had it in drive, I had it in reverse. Gentle shunt. Only the Volvo’s 1980s sold as a rock bumpers are exactly the right height to neatly clear my neighbour’s Peugot’s bumpers. Meaning our solid-as-a-rock Volvo hit the boot (trunk) of their soft-as-Camembert and gently deformed the boot. It still opens and shuts fine, and my neighbour was awesome about it. But 2 quotes later, and I find I’ve had to ring the insurance company and suck it up. It’s my fault, they were parked and not even in the damn car. I was just knackered after the run of nights/days/nights/days and being sick. Foolish, it was. And I’m fearing what’ll happen to the insurance premium next year. I’ve got so used to around 100 quid a year, which is laughably low. Ah well.
In good news, I’ve written the first draft of my dissertation. And in celebration taken today as a relaxation day. Which was lovely and relaxing until my neighbour sent me the second quote… :-(
And now, nights.
