Shrew
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2013
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Would anyone give me an estimate on how much a pre-assembled would cost, and if anyone would be interested in selling one to me?
The cost of parts for a regular Millett is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-$200. Not sure about the starving student, but the regular Millett is pretty straight forward on strip board.
Quote:The cost of parts for a regular Millett is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-$200. Not sure about the starving student, but the regular Millett is pretty straight forward on strip board.
When I built my SSMH the total parts cost was around $100 including case, tubes and everything. I added a GrubDAC to that, which was another $20-30 or so. I built mine point to point, it wasn't really that hard after I got all the parts mapped out and rechecked the schematic for the zillionth time. There's a million P2P builds and pictures in this thread for reference, and there was some work with a stripboard layout at some point, which there was a separate thread for.
Hey everyone,
Thanks for all of the input into building this amp. It sounds great! I have a few questions about some minor issues I am having:
1) If one of the RCA inputs are unplugged I get one of the headphone channels spike to max volume....when both are plugged in, everything is fine. Could this be due to the fact that I grounded my headphone jack to one of the RCA inputs? I did this as I was having a loud hum/buzz when it was grounded to my ground plate. I am not sure why.
2) I have a hum when I touch my volume knob (I already tried to ground the POT without success as someone stated in the past posts).
3) When the POT is turned up to MAX volume, I have a constant buzz (is this what is referred to as the ceiling max?). When it is at a normal volume I hear no buzz at all and everything is crystal clear.
4) Just an FYI, when this amp is plugged into a DAC (from my computer) I can hear noise that is related to my hard drives (reading and writing data), keyboard, mouse movements, etc. I am assuming this is due to Electrical Interference or RFI the tubes are picking up. Anyway to fix this?
5) A question about grounding.....At first I was not thinking and just following the schematic. I grounded the POT, RCA inputs, and Headphone amp as seperate lines all connecting to a single point on the grounding plate. I had a TERRIBLE loud buzzing to the point I thought it was going to blow my headphone speakers. After walking away and thinking about it, I realized I needed to run the ground from the RCA inputs to the ground terminals on the POT. I also grounded my headphone socket to one the RCA input. I then ran one single ground from this "circuit" to a single point on the ground plate. Is this correct?
Does it do this regardless of which RCA is unplugged, or is it the same for both? If it's only for one, I'm guessing you have one of the RCA not grounded properly.
If you used an off-board PSU, it's probably not earthed. In this case, you don't even have a ground to ground it to. Connecting the pot's shaft to 0 V may help, or it may make it worse. I'm clueless how one should go about fixing this... anyone else got experience with this?
Maybe you should start by verifying, using a DMM, that the pot's shaft is indeed grounded.
Any amplifier will output some audible noise when the volume is maxed. It's normal, and not really a problem. If you listen to music at this volume, you have more serious problems to take care of.
By "DAC from my computer", do you mean that you're using your sound card's audio out? If yes, then it's normal. The inside of a PC is drowned with all sort of RFI and EMI. If your sound card is not shielded, as most cheap cards are, then its audio signal gets polluted with all this junk.
It depends on your religion. There is no consensus on how one should wire grounds inside an audio device. Just look at the mess created by ground loops in commercial products... it's endless.
You're the only person able to answer this question. Did changing the ground scheme improve on the buzz? The level of the buzzing is your only gauge telling you if one scheme is better than the other.
As for the discussion on the cost, should I start counting how much mine cost? I lost count at around 500, but I'll do the math again if anyone cares.Though honestly, I think I'll sleep better if I don't know.
Hi everyone, just bought a built SSMH from a friend, but one of the channel (left to be precise) doesn't sound correctly. It crackles and sounds very low, almost no sound at all. What could possibly be the problem? I suspect one of the caps is broken, but no idea which one. Any help?
Hi everyone, just bought a built SSMH from a friend, but one of the channel (left to be precise) doesn't sound correctly. It crackles and sounds very low, almost no sound at all. What could possibly be the problem? I suspect one of the caps is broken, but no idea which one. Any help?