ANK Audiokits Have Arrived! Follow the Build Here

He's talking about the amp/pre-amp that Raylinds is building.

 

my apologies.

 

Earlier in the thread he mentioned that the preamp would have a very long burn in. That is what I was referring to. He could listen to the system improve over time as the preamp went through the burn in period.

 

Now it is time to build the tube audio section. Here I have the two 300B and one 6SH7 sockets installed onto the copper plate, along with the Audio Note Tantalum resisters and the Elna caps. The big reddish brown resistors are not AN. The wires are all pure silver solid 16 gauge. I've added about $1400 to the build by going with solid pure silver wiring in the audio sections and Audio Note pure silver litz wire in the speakers and in the critical audio paths of the amps and preamp.



The plate installed in the chassis and the 300B filament wiring attached:



6

The build is very near completion at this point.

 

While there is still some wires to be connected, I couldn't resist installing the tubes to see how it looks. The copper plate really looks great. I put two coats of clear copper sealer on it to keep it looking new.



I'm going to let the whole system burn in for a while (and let my bank account recover) before tube rolling, but I put in some NOS 1940s Raytheon 6SH7s.



I love the beautiful silver Audio Note RCA jack and speaker terminals.

 

Fantastic, I'm living vicariously through you!! If I only had the balls.

 

This has been the most fun I've had in a long time. It is really easy- everything is packaged and well marked and the instructions are idiot proof (good for me). Anybody could build one of these with about twenty minutes of soldering practice.

 

I've built Heathkits, but nothing approaching the money you've invested.

 

looking good

 

That tranny cover looks good on there!

 

It's really looking beautiful. Especially the copper plates. Great idea to seal them so they stay beautiful.

 

Same here. I've been spending too much time at the ANK site, eyeballing their EL84 amps.

 

I'm warming to the traffo cover. Good to see all the pictures - so much fun.

 

Looking good Ray! Excellent pics....

 

I lurked on that site for years before pulling the trigger, and I am so glad that I did. The soldering intimidated me. I had some soldering experience, but was unsure if I was good enough at it for an audio amp. I bought an inexpensive soldering practice kit and after twenty minutes felt perfectly confident in my skills. Now I feel like a pro. The instructions are so thorough, and the parts are bagged and marked so the process is really easy.

These kits may not be for everyone, but the last reason one should not buy one is because they can't build it. I am 100% certain that anybody could build one of these.

Of course, I have yet to finish them, so let's see if they blow up or not.

 

I can't finish the monoblock until some parts I ordered from the UK arrive, so I turned my attention to the preamp, and finished the power supply. The tubes are the 5U4G rectifier tubes.









It is pretty easy to keep this looking neat as the wires run under the PCB and there are a lot of them.

 

Looks like nice this boards. Sturdy to be plugging tubes into.

 

Ray, It all looks really good, hope to hear it soon.

 

Thanks for the kind and encouraging words, everyone. I finished wiring the first monoblock today. I will get a fresh start in the morning and double check all of the connections and begin testing with the multimeter. I will post pictures and results tomorrow.

 

Ray,

Congrats. You're doing a great job, and I'm sure you'll be happy with the result.

 

Latest Update: Some of the monoblock voltages didn't seem right, so need to look at that but the wiring is finished.







I also replaced the tranny covers as the previous ones had no way of fastening the to the chassis. Here are the new ones:

 

Here is the audio board with all of the components soldered:



The good side:


The progress so far:

 

Those caps are gonna need some serious burn-in time.

 

I like the zip-lock ties on the V Caps.

 

Any plans to pot the transformers?