Univox/Lafayette U65RN Guitar amp Help needed.

Nashou66

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Hi Guys, I have this Guitar amp that a customer of my restaurant asked me to look at.

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His nephew was messing with it and not sure what he did to it .

This is how I think it was wired, minus the Grd wire.(I'll explain later why Im not sure.)

I had this powered from my Isolation transformer and switching between DBT and Full Mains.

To start it had two power cords connected into the amp and the original 2 cord wire was cut and had but connectors holding it together which one was
not connected. I guess they used a there pronged cord to try to eliminate hum maybe. Not sure why they had this in there but only the Ground wire was connected to the amp, so maybe they used the two wall sockets at the same time? Who knows.

So I decided to remove the two cord original since it was cute outside the amp and wire in the three cord plug. I followed the way the wiring was done.

Hot to the Fuse> lamp>switch.(Found it weird that the hot went through a 110 volt 1/3 watt lamp. then the switch)
Neutral to other side of Switch and GND to transformer screw( chassis) .

The two transformer wires one white and one yellow went as follows

Yellow to the Hot side of the switch and the White went to the end of the fuse hold that the light also went to.

Here is how it was ( I think ) I put the wires back just to show location with no solder on some FYI.

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Well this had a loud 120hz hum, now I think it was wired up Said above . I say I think because I never took pics of it originally and then I began thinking of how it might be wired wrong and began to re wire it how I thought it should be.
Well At one point I got no hum but also no sound from the amp and a low voltage after the light( at the hot side of the switch) which I figured should be 120vac, it was like 20vac.

So I tried wiring it a couple different ways.
One way was I had the hot go from fuse to the lamp to the switch hot side where the yellow transformer wire was also connected, but I removed the Yellow and put it on the other side of the switch. I then connected the white transformer wire with the neutral power cord wire . I figured this would take the transformer out of the circuit with the switch.
Still had hum.

then I tried something else, for got how it was , and the DBT went full bright and the indicator lamp burned out.

So this is where I am at. Here is the schematic , it had no death cap as the schematic shows, also there is no indicator lamp in this schematic .
And I read somewhere this is a floating GND design. Not sure so I'll let you guys chime in.

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I'll add more pics of the amp and its guts now

Some close ups of the wiring not soldered in, of how I think it was. Close ups of the above overall pic of the wiring.

Yellow wire is a primary, Black is one wire from the lamp and white is the neutral from the wall
( I think this is how it was, it might have had the other transformer white wire, but that didn't make sense to me)


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Fat black wire is Hot mains in, thin black wire goes to lamp>switch, and White is from transformer primary.

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Some board pics.

Two red wires on right side are the secondaries going to the rectifier. There is a thin black wire which I believe is the center tap, it goes to one
of the pads ( the large one) where the outputs to the speaker are also soldered in( fat black wires top right).

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I will add I recapped the board and hum was the same as before the recap.

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Burnt out lamp.

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Also, while I wait for new lamps I found on eBay for this, can I just wire it from the fuse to the switch and bypass the lamp
or is it needed in the circuit , i can't see why it is as its not even in the schematic.

Thanks

Athanasios
 
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Well I found some pics of how it should be wired. I guess the yellow is the wire that should be connected to neutral and the white is the hot.

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On mine some one was using the lamp wire as a feed to the switch. So if the lamp went out the amp would not work. That is why the voltage was low as well
at the switch and other places.

Powered it up wired the correct way with no lamp and the hum was still there but a little lower.

I might just put two diodes to replace the original rectifier in case it's failing under load as it measures as two diodes when removed from the transformer circuit.

Athanasios
 
ok, I know a half wave rectified signal will have a saw tooth wave form.

This is from the center pin of the Dual diode rectifier .

I should add it looks similar on the speaker output .



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565 mv seems high to me.

The schematic shows a 1000uf cap, mine had a 2200uf and I replaced it with a 3300uf.


Does this look ok? Not sure what the amperage load would be, the fuse is a .750a . and on DBT with a 150 watt bulb the AC meter I use shows it drawing .100A at idle.

If it is truly 100ma this would seem high from my research .
 
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Ok, decided to add another 3300uf cap and see how much it would reduce hum and smooth out the
ripple.

One extra 3300uf cap.

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Then I removed the cap and changed out the rectifier with a fast soft recovery one.

New rectifier additional cap removed.

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Seems the new rectifier performs better than the old one. So I added the additional cap back in.
so total filter capacitance is 6600uf.

Additional Cap and new rectifier.

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Things got a little better ^.


Now I will add another cap to make it total of 9900uf

Three 3300uf caps in parallel

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Getting closer........


Now with 4 3300uf total in parallel.

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Still not perfect but there has to be something else going on.

Maybe I should up the output coupling cap?

Athanasios
 
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Here is the schematic
Can't see the schematic

Are you sure it's only half wave rectified, ie 1 diode

Also not clear if waveforms are unregulated supply taken at main caps or...
400mVp-p does not sound unreasonable for half wave rectified at main caps

Assume scope trace at amp output is 50/60Hz hum (again half wave rectified)

What does the rest of the power supply look like?
 
Can't see the schematic

Are you sure it's only half wave rectified, ie 1 diode

Also not clear if waveforms are unregulated supply taken at main caps or...
400mVp-p does not sound unreasonable for half wave rectified at main caps

Assume scope trace at amp output is 50/60Hz hum (again half wave rectified)

What does the rest of the power supply look like?
Here it is does it show up now?


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Two diodes common cathode .

I scoped at the cathode junction. But even at the cap connection it was the same and at the outputs.
But during testing Something happened but not sure what. One of the outputs was extremely hot
compared to the other .

To the left of the yellow dot is the hot output, to the left of the blue dot is the cold other output.

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But there was sound, I turned up the volume much higher than usual in my testing and strummed the strings and it was very loud and then the hum went away and the hot output was the same as the other :dunno:. I have 4 3300uf caps as smoothing caps. .

So today I got the replacement light delivered and wired it up and decided to test the amp but this time removing one cap at a time, the hum only slightly increased with every cap removal and the sawtooth ripple increased slightly but the hum was not as bad. So I decided to add two of the caps back and kept them in as it lowered the hum to a manageable level.

Here it is with two more caps added to the back side.

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Needless to say it's working with some hiss. The owner said hell use it like this for now and if he wants me to change the transistors out to se if the his goes down he'll let me do it.

It cleaned up great !!!

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Athanasios
 
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See red circle below. What is it, a jumper for GND? Check proximity for track underneath jumper
 

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See red circle below. What is it, a jumper for GND? Check proximity for track underneath jumper
I saw that and there is no continuity to the trace under it. Amp is all put back together.

Also there is no VR for bias. Its a cap coupled design as well.

If i wasn't returning it tomorrow I would probably change all the transistors out. 2SC536 is are used and there are 4 germanium , the two outputs 2SB407RD and two 2SB405GN.

Athanasios
 
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