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Phase Linear 3300 Series II Recap and Cleaning
- Thread starter NavLinear
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- Joined
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- Halfbiass...Electron Herder and Backass Woof
Well - my Pioneer SA-9900 is not working (shit - something else to fix) and the PL 400 is cracked open awaiting modification. The 400 will be my next thread. So I'll be listening to something decent soon - understanding that soon is a relative term.
I'm still dicking with the 8903A - using it in the local mode is proving to be interesting. I really want to get a GPIB controller board to automate the testing. Using this in the local mode tends to be cumbersome. Of course I had to build some test cables and since i'm somewhat paticular it took a while to get the right cable / connector mix and of course the right crimping tool to do the job right. The 8903 wants a 50 ohm impedence connector so I went with RG-58 cable and the appropriate BNC and RCA connectors. Spent some time finding hardware and building those. Oh well - getting closer to having an audio lab set up. Kinda - sorta anyways.
It's looking like I'll need to pick someone's brain regarding the 3300 testing - a couple of areas where I'm not 100% sure of what the SM is spelling out.
A little bit of Jimi tonight - he died way too young. Can't imagine what he would have done if he lived a normal (what is normal?) life.
Purple Haze - Are You Experienced?
I'm still dicking with the 8903A - using it in the local mode is proving to be interesting. I really want to get a GPIB controller board to automate the testing. Using this in the local mode tends to be cumbersome. Of course I had to build some test cables and since i'm somewhat paticular it took a while to get the right cable / connector mix and of course the right crimping tool to do the job right. The 8903 wants a 50 ohm impedence connector so I went with RG-58 cable and the appropriate BNC and RCA connectors. Spent some time finding hardware and building those. Oh well - getting closer to having an audio lab set up. Kinda - sorta anyways.
It's looking like I'll need to pick someone's brain regarding the 3300 testing - a couple of areas where I'm not 100% sure of what the SM is spelling out.
A little bit of Jimi tonight - he died way too young. Can't imagine what he would have done if he lived a normal (what is normal?) life.
Purple Haze - Are You Experienced?
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The 3300 manual is a but confusing at times. Exd has the advantage of being able to walk next door and get the skinny on any anomolies that come up when he's testing or has questions like that. Dean has told him at times that some of the specs could only be met under certain conditions and those were not spelled out in the manuals. Ask away, if I or Joe don't know, we can always ask Ed.
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The testing of the preamp has gone very well indeed. I've never seen such a pretty sine wave as this guy puts out. My source is clean and the output in all sources (have not tested headphone section yet) look great.
I need to make up a couple more test cables but that's part of the test process. If this sounds as good as the test results I'll be very pleased.
A couple of photos showing the test cables (RG-58 50 Ohm) and the newly purchased HP 8903A. Still dicking with the 8903 so for the moment I'm using test equipment I'm familiar with.
I need to make up a couple more test cables but that's part of the test process. If this sounds as good as the test results I'll be very pleased.
A couple of photos showing the test cables (RG-58 50 Ohm) and the newly purchased HP 8903A. Still dicking with the 8903 so for the moment I'm using test equipment I'm familiar with.
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Well - after spending way too much time trying to get all the parts together for a set of test cables I finally said f@#k it and took one of my six foot Pomona RG-58 cables and cut it in half and added the RCA connector hardware. The RCA connectors are from Radio Shack from the early to mid 90's. They were dumping them for a heavily discounted price and I needed some interconnects so I bought out all the stores in our county. The test cables are working out well and I needed another set so I canabilized another six foot BNC cable to get a total of four test cables. Now I can provide a stimulus for both channels and measure the outputs simultaneously.
Ok - sorry about the delay. I wanted to verify things first and it seems that my idea won't work as the photos will show. My idea was to install a terminal to the bias measurement output but realized that the lands are smaller than the terminal mating surface. The controller board was not designed with this in mind and not until I pulled the board from my kit and paired up the board and the terminal did I realize the problem.
Once a terminal is swagged in place you want enough land area to solder the terminal in place and get a nice fillet. As the photos show the land area is obscured by the installed terminal - so no cigar. Oh well.
Once a terminal is swagged in place you want enough land area to solder the terminal in place and get a nice fillet. As the photos show the land area is obscured by the installed terminal - so no cigar. Oh well.
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Here’s the mounting hardware that was “grown†to hold in place the power indicator LED. The holder was designed to allow for positioning the LED relative to the faceplate as shown in the following photos. It's made from polycarbonate using a technique named fused deposition modeling (FDM).
For those that are interested here is an excerpt from the color glossy of the system used to make this part:
"FDM begins with a software process, developed by Stratasys, which processes an STL file (stereolithography file format) in minutes, mathematically slicing and orienting the model for the build process. If required, support structures are automatically generated. The machine dispenses two materials – one for the model and one for a disposable support structure."
"The thermoplastics are liquefied and deposited by an extrusion head, which follows a tool-path defined by the CAD file. The materials are deposited in layers as fine as 0.04 mm (0.0016") thick, and the part is built from the bottom up – one layer at a time."
"FDM works on an "additive" principle by laying down material in layers. A plastic filament or metal wire is unwound from a coil and supplies material to an extrusion nozzle which can turn the flow on and off. The nozzle is heated to melt the material and can be moved in both horizontal and vertical directions by a numerically controlled mechanism, directly controlled by a computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software package. The model or part is produced by extruding small beads of thermoplastic material to form layers as the material hardens immediately after extrusion from the nozzle. Stepper motors or servo motors are typically employed to move the extrusion head."
"Several materials are available, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) polymer, polycarbonates, polycaprolactone, polyphenylsulfones and waxes, with different trade-offs between strength and temperature properties. A "water-soluble" material (such as PVA) can be used for making temporary supports while manufacturing is in progress, this soluble support material is quickly dissolved with specialized mechanical agitation equipment utilizing a precisely heated sodium hydroxide solution."
I plan on using RTV as an adheasive to mount this to the back side of the faceplate as I did not want to modify the beautiful faceplate.
For those that are interested here is an excerpt from the color glossy of the system used to make this part:
"FDM begins with a software process, developed by Stratasys, which processes an STL file (stereolithography file format) in minutes, mathematically slicing and orienting the model for the build process. If required, support structures are automatically generated. The machine dispenses two materials – one for the model and one for a disposable support structure."
"The thermoplastics are liquefied and deposited by an extrusion head, which follows a tool-path defined by the CAD file. The materials are deposited in layers as fine as 0.04 mm (0.0016") thick, and the part is built from the bottom up – one layer at a time."
"FDM works on an "additive" principle by laying down material in layers. A plastic filament or metal wire is unwound from a coil and supplies material to an extrusion nozzle which can turn the flow on and off. The nozzle is heated to melt the material and can be moved in both horizontal and vertical directions by a numerically controlled mechanism, directly controlled by a computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software package. The model or part is produced by extruding small beads of thermoplastic material to form layers as the material hardens immediately after extrusion from the nozzle. Stepper motors or servo motors are typically employed to move the extrusion head."
"Several materials are available, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) polymer, polycarbonates, polycaprolactone, polyphenylsulfones and waxes, with different trade-offs between strength and temperature properties. A "water-soluble" material (such as PVA) can be used for making temporary supports while manufacturing is in progress, this soluble support material is quickly dissolved with specialized mechanical agitation equipment utilizing a precisely heated sodium hydroxide solution."
I plan on using RTV as an adheasive to mount this to the back side of the faceplate as I did not want to modify the beautiful faceplate.
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Well - here are a couple more photos of the pre-amp. I've done a number of tests and all looks good and tonight I hooked up the pre-amp to the 400 and a CD (transport and DAC) and some speaks and holly shit!!!!!!!!!!! The amp has the power supply caps replaced (WO) but I want to listen to a mostly unmodded amplifier before I add the new WO controller and other mods. Uckfay! Olyhay itshay! (pig latin for those that don't know). Need to give it a listen for a day or two before the next mod but so far so good.
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- Joined
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DAYAM DUDE!!!! Beautiful workspace, beautiful equipment----and that LED holder is the SHIT!!! Love the strategic placement of the BABB, load , and cables, Dennis you're too much man. Beautiful work. The attention to detail is professional!! NICE!!
one little tip. To hold the faceplates vertical, take some 3" poly pipe , cut some 3-4" length pieces and slot the to fit the plate. that way they can be vertical and leave a lot more room to work the chassis.
one little tip. To hold the faceplates vertical, take some 3" poly pipe , cut some 3-4" length pieces and slot the to fit the plate. that way they can be vertical and leave a lot more room to work the chassis.
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It is a PL. Lee and I went through this with my PL. I like the sound of mine w/o the mods. Not knocking the WO at all. I have never heard it. LOL Try going with some nice caps in the signal path. You can swap them to the WO mod. Just baby steps. When I bought the BGs they were a lot cheaper. There are some very nice caps out there. If you really want to go crazy. Read up on the Shotky diodes. Interesting reading. I was thinking of doing it but I didn't. Wonder if they can influence the sound? Since it is only going to be yours there are other tricks you can try before you swap. I'm an efficiency nut. Give them the least amount of work. Heat is bad. Are you coming out of a 120 volt power supply? Not the wall. My amps draw some power. If you can keep it stable and see what happens.
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Also, to keep the bias tranny leads from breaking due nto repetitive bending, somehow gather and hold the fiberglass sleeves. I drop some epoxy on the sleeves and let it run to the chassis, when it's time to change, the leads can be run back through the sleeves. I'm sure you'll come up with something original and slick. On Don Imlay's 400 Ser II, i built a plate with an arm that I cable tied the lead sleeves to. It was kinda cute.