DC-3: lowering plate voltage and bullet proofing

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fdesalvo

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 13, 2005
Messages
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Location
New Orleans to Los Angeles
Long time! Probably been a decade since I’ve owned a boogie. Had a MKIV rack, stiletto deuce 2, dc10, dc-3, and maybe more lol. I left bc of constant reliability issues on stage. I couldn’t resist a great deal on this minty dc-3 combo and am back in the fold.

I plan on bringing the amp up to current maintenance (cap job, new pi coupling caps, clean/lube pots, clean jacks and tube sockets, etc. I want to get ahead of the issues that plagued my others. This leads me to the obvious elephant in the room - the power amp. I’d like to:

1. Lower bias or add potentiometer to adjust
2. Lower plate voltage to 6bq5s

I can handle 1, but looking at the schematic, it looks like I’ll have to cut some traces on the tube board and add some dropping resistors or a zener off point a. Before I reinvent the wheel, has anyone tackled this? I’d like to bring the vp down 20-30v. The schematic looks incomplete or erroneous, as well. Hope I won’t have to physically trace the power section.

Finally, are there any other issues of things to look out for? Honestly, I feel the amps plate supply in general is way over-filtered. I may bring the reservoir caps down to 47uf or so and look at bringing the preamp down to 22uf per node. Overfiltering leads to loss of dynamics and a stiff feel under the pick.

All the best
 
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