When Eastpoint advertised a Lance Cochrane tube amp on BT I jumped at the chance.
One of my local audio pals has several and I'd read of his scratch building skill. Even more enticing: from Eastpoint's pictures it looked like it was single-ended -- my amp flavor of choice.
To make sure I found an email for Lance and sent him a request: did he remember this amp and what was the topology. Mirabile dictu, he replied and yes it was single-ended -- but tetrode, not triode or pentode.
So I bought it, sold some gear to cover the hole in my wallet and had a great time with it.
After months of daily use I turned it on one day and nothing. Eeek. I took it out of my system and used my weak (did i say weak?) trouble-shooting skills. The 6x4 rectifier was bad. I fished another one out of a tube tuner and tried again. This time no sound and then smoke
Long story short: I do a bunch of inept troubleshooting and email Lance again hoping he can steer me in the right direction so I can fix it myself. After a few rounds of him giving me tips and answering my questions he says...heck, just send it to me and I'll fix it.
And he offered to do it for cost:jawdrop:
So I sent it off to California and he found the problem: transformer died. He had a better one, installed it, changed to SS rectification, repainted the amp and sent it back -- packed to survive a direct hit.
He told me what I could send him (I kept asking) and I doubled it and wanted to post this appreciation(I checked with him b4 posting this).
And it is a killer amp and sounds great. Tube-rolling heaven returns:thmbsp:
Pictures show amp before the fix, the old and new trafo, amp after fix (hadn't put base back on), and under the skirt.
One of my local audio pals has several and I'd read of his scratch building skill. Even more enticing: from Eastpoint's pictures it looked like it was single-ended -- my amp flavor of choice. To make sure I found an email for Lance and sent him a request: did he remember this amp and what was the topology. Mirabile dictu, he replied and yes it was single-ended -- but tetrode, not triode or pentode.
So I bought it, sold some gear to cover the hole in my wallet and had a great time with it.
After months of daily use I turned it on one day and nothing. Eeek. I took it out of my system and used my weak (did i say weak?) trouble-shooting skills. The 6x4 rectifier was bad. I fished another one out of a tube tuner and tried again. This time no sound and then smoke
Long story short: I do a bunch of inept troubleshooting and email Lance again hoping he can steer me in the right direction so I can fix it myself. After a few rounds of him giving me tips and answering my questions he says...heck, just send it to me and I'll fix it.
And he offered to do it for cost:jawdrop:
So I sent it off to California and he found the problem: transformer died. He had a better one, installed it, changed to SS rectification, repainted the amp and sent it back -- packed to survive a direct hit.
He told me what I could send him (I kept asking) and I doubled it and wanted to post this appreciation(I checked with him b4 posting this).
And it is a killer amp and sounds great. Tube-rolling heaven returns:thmbsp:
Pictures show amp before the fix, the old and new trafo, amp after fix (hadn't put base back on), and under the skirt.
