Need Help with 5e3x2

[Oldmanbluez]

Hi everybody!

I bought a 5e3x2 off ebay a while back. This amp has never work right. It has very low volume and very distorted. During my troubleshooting I found many grounding issues and fixed those. I also swapped all the tubes, changed the speakers, even the OT and it still has the same issue.

During my research I realized that it is an older version of the 5e3x2 so I'm running into issues reconciling some of the differences. Does anybody have a schematic or a layout for the older version of the 5e3x2?

[hasserl]

How old? I have one from Feb of 07 if that helps.

[Oldmanbluez]

Thanks for the reply!

The schematic on the Weber site is dated September 10, 2006. I'm not sure how old the layout is since it is not dated, but it does match the schematic. Neither match my amp as the schematic has a 100ohm 25w R32 which my amp does not have and the 150ohm cathode resistor and 50uf cathode cap are off the board. These are on the board on my amp.

Anything that has the voltages would be helpful as well.

[hasserl]

Send a message to hasserl at netzero dot net and I'll replyu to it with the schematic/layout I have. Note that the builder may have not followed the schematic/layout in all details. I did not use the 100 ohm 25 watt resistor either. The purpose is to drop B+ voltage. I used the low voltage taps on the power transformer and a 5U4GB rectifier and my B+ voltages were just fine, no need to drop them. I then mounted one of the cathode resistors on the board in place of the dropping resistor. Note that I split the power tubes into 2 pairs, each with their own cathode resistor, and wired one of them on a switch to take them out of circuit as a half power option.