Alright this may seem kind of out there but I have on loan to me a Vandersteen OL-1 step up transformer. The problem is I do not have a manual for this thing. A bigger problem is Vandersteen is of no help whats so ever.

Now this has many dip switches on it and I am guessing these are for impedance matching. My question. Is there anyone here who can measure these. Essentially reverse engineering the operating instructions.

A search of the web turns up next to nil on this thing other then one or maybe 2 other people who own them. I am trying to contact them but you know how that goes.

Maybe Echo or punker could help me out here ? Anyone for that matter. Any help would be mucho appreciated. Thanks

Grumpy

Im not sure if this will help but you can measure the primary side with a DMM ohms of course, and then measure the secondary leads when the switch is in different positions. The higher up the ohms your getting on the secondary side the more the voltage is being stepped up. Im not exactly clear how this corresponds to getting a voltage reading from the ohm readings though so i wont go there.

A bigger problem is Vandersteen is of no help whats so ever. Really? What @ssholes... :thumbsdn: Why would they have a problem with helping out???

I found the recent eBay auction and apparently that one also sold with no manual. I can also see the dip switches...of course there's no bloody notation for the switches...

Hope one of your contacts gets back with you...in the meantime, I'm gonna do some checking around...

I don't think its them being Ahole as much as no one has worked there long enough to know what the hell this thing even is.

A Op manual would be out of this world but i ain't holding my breath.

Grumpy

Ok I'm reviving this old thread to see if anyone has any news. I'm going to try this step up transformer but would like to know more about it's capabilities and setup.

Ok I'm reviving this old thread to see if anyone has any news. I'm going to try this step up transformer but would like to know more about it's capabilities and setup.

I'm assuming we are talking a TT cartridge step up transfomer suitable to make MC carts compatible with MM inputs. If so then the voltage step up ratio will be fixed by the primary/secondary winding ratio unless some of the dip switch settings are winding taps. The rest of the switches (or all of them) should just switch in matching resistors and capacitors so the cart 'sees' the load that it is designed for. If these assumtions are correct then I would think that one might be able to determine capacitance switch settings by trying the various switch setting while measuring the input capacitance with a cap meter. Load resistor selection should be able to be measure the same way with an input ohm meter across the primary.

Simple in theory, but time consuming in practice I guess. If you end up not finding a manual and you want to send it to me, I do have a decent wide range capacitance meter and might be able to figure it out.

Now if we are talking some kind of power transformer then forget I even responded :)

Lefty

You're correct in your assumption. This is for a MC cart.

here are some pics

Grumpy,

I remember this unit from back in the 80s. It is not a transformer, it is a head-amp. Yes, they accomplish the same task, but the difference is quite importance because there is no signal transfomer inside your unit.

I never personally used this specific unit, but my guess is that it probably works very much like my klyne sk2, with swichable load resistances. Assumig that these switches only adjust for the load, then this will be completely trivial to reverse engineer.

My guess is that each switch switches in a parallel load resistor for your cartridge. When all are off, then no additianlo loading is present, and you could have a very high imput impedance. But each time yo switch a dip, then you place another resister in parallel. It is proabaly a set of resistors along the lines of: 4.7, 10, 47, 100, 470, 1k Ohms. By placing them im parallel, you can get achieve many different load values between roughly 3 ohms, and 1k.

Connected up you DMM, and measure the input resistance with no switches on, and then with one single switch on at a time, and record each value. The optimal loading will be achieved by placing the appropriate pairs of resistors in parallel to give the best macth for input resistance.

Each dipp switch will switch only a single channel, so you need to do the same thing on each one.

Once you know the loading, then consult the manual for your cartridge for the optimal load, and set it as close as you can get it to this load. Then listen. If it doesn't sound right, try increasing or decresing the load slightly until you get the sound that you are hoping for.

Good Luck!

not as simple as that. power on or off I can't get good resistance readings, they flucuate, may be charging a cap. Here are some pic of the insides. What a pain to get, they soldered a can over the entire PCB. Shielding on the power supply yes but I think this was more to keep anyone from seeing what was inside.

Wow, that is a pain! Your right, that is not nearly as simple as I had guessed. It looks like this unit has adjustable HF rolloff, much like my klyne. This is designed to compensate for ultrasonic resonance that many MC cartridges exhibit.

This setup looks very similar to how my klyne is designed to work. Seeing the components, I would hazzard a guess that it may have a 100, and a 220 ohm resistors for load selection. If they're in parallel then you have potential imput impedances of about 220, 100 and 75 Ohms. from the connected dips.

The other switches must be tied to the rolloff. I can't give you any firm guidance here, ecept to say that the bigger that the cap is on this circuit, the lower in frequency that your rolloff will occur.

I don't know if it would be any help, but I could scan the page from my klyne manual that deals with its settings. Obviously they would not be the same, but I would hazzard a guess that there might be some similarities at least...

A scan would be great. I need all the help I can get on this one. Looks like the 1-4 dips are for resistance and 5-8 are for capacitance. Now being able to run any combination would create umpteen combinations. :sigh: