[Andrew LB]

So earlier I turned on my LittleDot MKIII v2.0 with the volume on about 20, and instead of hearing the very faint "tinking" noise, my ears got slammed with horribly loud crackling causing me to immediately rip my headphones off and as I was reaching to turn off the power, noticed the left Electro-Harmonix tube had what I would describe as "lightning" inside it. Kind of like those glass orbs that you touch and your finger attracts the electrical arc to touch that side of it. Obviously i didn't touch it and turned the amp off.
 
I ended up replacing all 4 tubes with the original horrible set that came with it and turned it back on, and now I only have sound in the right channel. I swapped input RCA's in the rear of the amp and still... only the right channel worked. Then to rule out that the left driver on my headphones didn't get blown out, I swapped the L and R cable connections and still nothing from that channel. 
 
I then decided to take the amp apart and see what got fried, and after a few minutes managed to get the entire PCB removed from the case with enough slack to work on it. Upon close inspection, it seems the 120ohm 5% (brown, red, brown, gold) resistors near the 6.3v AC label are completely shot. The only way I managed to find the proper color code was from the Little Dot MKIII modding thread. I did notice the paper cover on the top of two of the three big 250v/330uf capacitors had either popped off or was peeling, and while neither seem to have ruptured, i've decided to add them to my parts order. In fact, I may just order all new capacitors for the PCB since I have A LOT of hours use with this amplifier.
 
I'm not an expert at this kind of stuff but I know the basics, so if any of you notice anything I might have missed that should be replaced, please let me know. Or if there are any "essential" mods that you'd recommend while i have this amp apart.
 
Thanks in advance,
Andrew
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

[Andrew LB]

Well instead of ordering a bunch of parts and waiting around for them, I ran down to my local place for electronic parts, JK Electronics, and spent $1.40 on a pack of 10 resistors (120ohm 1/4w) and replaced the one blown and one almost blown resistor on each channel, put it back together, powered it be amp on and... IT WORKS!!!!!

In fact, the amplifier no longer has the faint noise it had before when cranked up! So if anyone else has this problem, hopefully this thread will help.