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Russian Cinema 'Lomo Kinap' Tube Amp

gadget73 said:
Looks like the plate structure is glowing red. Usually means too much dissapation by a pretty fair amount. Check the bias supply and coupling caps to that tube socket. I'd also try moving the tube to see if the problem follows the tube or stays with the socket. Don't run it like that or you'll be shopping for another replacement tube.
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OK, thanks for that Gadget. I'm still learning about this Tube stuff and I know I'm doing it the wrong way around (ie. taking a risk by expecting old gear to work perfectly without testing/replacing anything beforehand) but man it's so much fun and the sound I'm getting out of these things in particular is just wonderful. Very rewarding as is but I really need to get stuck into restoring them properly to avoid a disaster. Now that I'm running them on proper speakers I'm detecting a background hum so although I'm sure it's all easily fixable there's plenty to sink my teeth into :thmbsp:

I'll do some Tube swapping and see how it goes. I have a feeling it's the Tube itself because I've run both Amps before and didn't notice this but I may have just missed it too. Cheers.
 
Strewth! These Soviet Amps are crackers.

It's Friday night and the wife is out so I've just been experimenting with different tracks through them and the Mach 2s. Running flat EQ the Mach 2s are an incredible match to these Tube Amps from what I've heard so far. The NS-1000s are just so thin in the bottom end but the mids are of course OK however the humble old Mach 2s just make these beasts sing!

I've thrown several different genres at them and have noticed some big differences in sound to the what my Solid State Amp (M-70) produces. Thrashy type Punk Rock (Distillers, Refused) sounds very very good but when those distorted guitars really kick in they just don't give up and it feels like my ears are trying to fend them off. It's not a SPL or distortion thing, it's more like information (frequency?) overload as I've never ever heard that much sound come at me in one go before! That's the only way I can explain it. I'll need to get used to that :smoke:

Changing gear I threw on a dozen or so Pixies tracks. Sounded great but nothing mindblowingly different there. I then dialled up some Radiohead and was impressed but again not yet floored. I then tried out a couple of Birds of Tokyo tracks and they were very lush but that got me thinking that maybe Tube Amps excel at the more precise tracks vs the 'noisy' type rock/indie/pop stuff.

Enter The Eagles and Dire Straits, Pink Floyd and a bit of Stevie Wonder & Miles Davis. BOOM, I think my theory has been confirmed! I'm currently sitting in a pool of my own drool :drool: Absolute bliss... but I now wonder if it's the style of music or just the quality of the production that these Tubes are capitalising on?! I've heard guitar strings being plucked, Hammond organs filling the voids, guitars hitting those sweet high notes and choirs mixed faintly in the background of a chorus before but nothing like I've just heard tonight. This is incredible!

My research continues...
 
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Have you ever attended punk rock concerts?
Back in the day I did, as a working soundman.
I had to do a lot of preventive mixing at the time. But that sound is part of the genre's ethos.
What you discuss on grating guitar sounds is the way I recall it sounding live. Really aggressive, jarring, non-musical sounding cacophony.
It may just be that these tube amps are providing you with an accurate representation of what's on the recordings in a way you haven't experienced before.
 
To Attenuate or not Attenuate...

I've been enjoying these Amps in short bursts over the last week while I wait for the parts to arrive to continue with the restoration. The dissipation problem mentioned above is purely Tube related as I've bounced it around to a couple of other sockets and it's the only one with the glowing plate problem and because these strange output Tubes are relatively inexpensive (<$10-20 each including postage) I don't mind if this one dies prematurely as long as it doesn't screw up other things in the process (eek). I have my Ukrainian comrade hunting down a couple of full sets of brand new gold/platinum versions to use in these Amps once I've got the rest restored and re-cased as best I can so I wont be keeping any of these Tubes anyway.

I've just been thinking ahead and wondering what I should do regarding attenuation and more so if I even need to include it. The attenuation on the originals was done via a pretty bog standard yet very Russian looking Pot in series on the input however I disconnected them during the strip down and have just been feeding the signal direct from my C-70 Pre.

I suppose I'm asking for opinions here... as I'll always be feeding these from the output of a PreAmp is there any reason I should add more to the signal path by including an attenuation Pot? Have any of you ever felt an attenuation Pot could've saved your system during a freak catastrophic failure or something? I really can't see why I should include one but I'm all ears for advice and opinions so please feel free to share yours.

Cheers.
 
audiodon said:
Have you ever attended punk rock concerts?
Back in the day I did, as a working soundman.
I had to do a lot of preventive mixing at the time. But that sound is part of the genre's ethos.
What you discuss on grating guitar sounds is the way I recall it sounding live. Really aggressive, jarring, non-musical sounding cacophony.
It may just be that these tube amps are providing you with an accurate representation of what's on the recordings in a way you haven't experienced before.
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Yes & No Don. I've been to quite a few live shows in my time and some have contained moments of thrashy rock at crazy SPLs but strangely enough I've never actually been to a proper 'Punk' show to see group like Distillers or Refused. I think I get what you mean though and yes it's probably just my ears & brain needing time to adjust to the way these Amps sound. It's definitely not bad, it's just something I wasn't expecting.

So, as an old Audio Engineer how's your tinnitus?
 
After studying the schematic back at post #7, I think you are okay to permanently remove the attenuation pot if you are not going to use it. The schematic says it's got a 100K grid stopper, a 100K grid leak resistor, and a DC blocking cap already in place after the attenuation pot and before the first voltage gain stage, so I think you are good to remove it.

Overall it looks like a straight forward design [edit: comments on topology deleted since they were wrong]. But...that is one of the most complexly drawn schematics I have ever seen. ;).

Also, I've been studying up on my Australian English, because I wasn't sure what "cracker" meant in the context you used it in an earlier post. Looks like the closest definition I can find is "a loudmouth and boastful person," which I take to mean in this context that these amps have lots of reserve power and will play as loud as you need. ?
 
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honestly I wouldn't run it with a red plating tube just for fear of surrounding component damage. If that shorts internally it could take out some parts. In an extreme case, it could burn open one side of the output transformer primary, and that would be quite bad. At 20 bucks a pop, I'd say its worth a replacement. At a bare minimum, maybe a small wattage resistor on the cathode to act as a crude fuse that will hopefully let go before something really bad happens. Trouble with that is resistors make fairly poor fuses in terms of knowing exactly how much abuse it will take before it goes open.


I would agree with kward on the schematic looking excessively busy. Don't know why, but it seems the Europeans were good about making simple circuits look really messy on paper.
 
I am fortunate. When my ears started giving me problems, I quickly recognized what was making me cranky, tendered my resignation from the band I was working with regularly, trained my replacement and left the profession within two months.

Then I switched from my night owl job to delivering the morning paper while attending school classes during the day.

I didn't listen to anything but low volume classical music or news for a number of years after my mixing days. I feel that helped me, if not to heal, to at least learn how to deal with my limitations. I used to suffer level shifts, but I don't anymore, and I am fortunate in that I do not have tinnitus at all.

While concerned that I've always been oversensitive, I'm glad that I listened to what my ears were telling me back in the day.

I do feel that I left that live sound career in time to preserve my hearing and I healed or at least prevented the continuation of any damage by careful and judicious exposure to high SPLs, even when mixing loud music.

I haven't attended a live concert in 25 years where I didn't either take a trip to the bathroom to stuff some TP into my ears or bring my Hearos. I also wear earplugs when using the snowblower, drilling or running an electric saw or grinding wheel of any type.

Today, live sound is much louder than it was back in the day. I feel that the music is mixed loud enough to still be impactful for listeners who buy those foam earplugs on their way into the concerts. In essence, the music is mixed for listeners using plugs. I'm glad I'm not that sound man. Of course, I'm not saying that's the case for all live music, but for some genres of club, small room or stadium mixing it certainly is true.

I had my hearing tested by an audiologist at 50 and was told that my hearing is fine for someone my age.
That's the best we can hope for, right?
 
kward said:
After studying the schematic back at post #7, I think you are okay to permanently remove the attenuation pot if you are not going to use it. Also, I've been studying up on my Australian English, because I wasn't sure what "cracker" meant in the context you used it in an earlier post.
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Excellent info about the attenuator 'kward' and nice to see someone pulling me up about the use of Aussie slang in my posts :) I personally don't think I use it much but it does seep into conversation from time to time. Although the definition is obviously ambiguous, the term 'cracker' can be used to describe something very good or very nice. I have a feeling we got this usage from 'mother England'.
 
gadget73 said:
honestly I wouldn't run it with a red plating tube just for fear of surrounding component damage. If that shorts internally it could take out some parts. In an extreme case, it could burn open one side of the output transformer primary, and that would be quite bad. At 20 bucks a pop, I'd say its worth a replacement.
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Cheers Gadget. I'll have one last listening session then I'll disconnect them. I need to get them back into the workshop anyway as I need to catalogue & order their replacement caps and start building them into their new cases. Fingers crossed they'll hold out for another few hours while I feed them more tunes tonight.
 
audiodon said:
... I am fortunate in that I do not have tinnitus at all.
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Yeah, wow! You are one lucky duck not to have tinnitus at all. I've been to many live shows and most of the time I've worn ear plugs but there have been occasions where I've taken them out for one or two tracks to get the full effect & impact of the performance. Very rarely I've come across an engineer that has done such an incredible job I wanted to fully appreciate their skills but of course doing so, even for one track, cancels out all the good the ear plugs have done up to that point. I too wear hearing protection when using noisy power tools but alas I suffer from tinnitus... very faint and I can only usually notice it when I'm surrounded by absolute silence but nevertheless, it's there. It hasn't seemed to have affected my top-end hearing though as I can still detect screaming HF circuits (ie. CRT based screens) many others can't hear. Should go get them checked one day though just to see if I am in fact missing out on anything.

The price we pay...
 
After studying the schematic to this beast even more, it appears my previous statements as to the topology are not exactly correct. It appears to use two stages of gain, that then feeds the signal into a traditional split load (cathodyne) phase inverter, which then drives the output tubes. So that part seems normal.

The strange part is the second triode on the first tube. It appears its purpose is to offer some feedback to itself and to the first triode. Why, I wonder? Very strange, maybe to reduce gain?

Not that any of this is really earth shattering, but I thought it would be good to correct my previous post. I've never seen a second triode used like this one is apparently being used.
 
kward said:
The strange part is the second triode on the first tube. It appears its purpose is to offer some feedback to itself and to the first triode. Why, I wonder? Very strange, maybe to reduce gain?

Not that any of this is really earth shattering, but I thought it would be good to correct my previous post. I've never seen a second triode used like this one is apparently being used.
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"Ohhh those Russians" - Rasputin, Boney M

Seriously though, some of your explanation means nothing to me at this point in time but it wasn't long ago that none of it would've made sense so you see I'm learning, I'm learning :)
 
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Looks like they are forming a local feedback loop around that first tube. The second triode seems to be feeding back to the cathode of the first. Maybe its to improve linearity or something. Very possible I'm getting lost in the lines here, but does this have global feedback ? If not, maybe thats the reason for the local feedback.
 
djduck said:
So, have you made any more progress with these awesome amps?
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You checking up on me 'duck :D

I was loving the Amps as part of my main system as they were until a few weeks ago when I had to remove them due to safety concerns before a visit by some friends and their young kids. Safety of the kids or the Amps I wasn't too sure :scratch2:

They didn't make it back to the system as I've been busy with other things but I thought I'd take the opportunity to recap them before I finished them off in their new cases. Probably good timing anyway because we're getting around the actually decorating the Lounge and part of that includes me moving all my gear to a spare room which suits me fine. Once we get a couple more pieces of furniture the Lounge system will be reduced to a mint condition B&O Beolab 5000, a Beogram 1200 and a pair of Beovox 3702s mainly used with a SONOS ZP90 but the Turntable will be spun up every now & then.

I'll update this once I've done more work on them. Thanks for asking!
 
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