Troubleshooting and Testing Frustration
Posted: Wed 07/10/19 1:58 pm
You ever chase a noise that evades you forever, and it winds up being something stupid? I'm sure you have.
I posted a while ago, about how a power supply in a different room in my house was causing an oscillation. I didn't know that at the time, so I chopsticked like crazy, and eventually figured it out by a stroke of luck.
Well, since then I've been sure to keep that thing unplugged while troubleshooting. One of my prototype amps I've been working on sounded awesome, but I had a stupid oscillation showing up, and I couldn't get rid of it. This went on for a while. Whenever I had spare time, I would work on it. Chopsticking, changing lead paths, etc...
I chopsticked the thing so much, I wound up needing to replace two of the preamp tube sockets! Poor bastages couldn't handle all the wire flopping and fussing. Oops.
I got the thing so quiet it was crazy, but the stupid oscillation persisted. Out of sheer frustration, I reached over and shut off the power strip that has all my networking/wifi stuff on it. Poof! The noise was gone, the amp was dead quiet.
Once again I learned the hard way to eliminate outside influence...but on the bright side, if I can make an amp quiet with that interference 3 feet from my desk before I shut that stuff off, the final product will be killer.
I posted a while ago, about how a power supply in a different room in my house was causing an oscillation. I didn't know that at the time, so I chopsticked like crazy, and eventually figured it out by a stroke of luck.
Well, since then I've been sure to keep that thing unplugged while troubleshooting. One of my prototype amps I've been working on sounded awesome, but I had a stupid oscillation showing up, and I couldn't get rid of it. This went on for a while. Whenever I had spare time, I would work on it. Chopsticking, changing lead paths, etc...
I chopsticked the thing so much, I wound up needing to replace two of the preamp tube sockets! Poor bastages couldn't handle all the wire flopping and fussing. Oops.
I got the thing so quiet it was crazy, but the stupid oscillation persisted. Out of sheer frustration, I reached over and shut off the power strip that has all my networking/wifi stuff on it. Poof! The noise was gone, the amp was dead quiet.
Once again I learned the hard way to eliminate outside influence...but on the bright side, if I can make an amp quiet with that interference 3 feet from my desk before I shut that stuff off, the final product will be killer.