Silvertone Low Preamp Plates

[Gollum]

No I haven't. It's not the cheapest around, but it's certainly nothing special. I've used it for years for automotive uses.

Any suggestions on how to go about checking it, other than buying another meter and compating the two?

[RWood]

but for some reason at the fuse and switch the amp was seeing 116.4. w....

A leaky Death Cap can do this. If you haven't already, remove C31, the .05 cap from the polarity switch to ground. Install a three-prong power cord for safety.

Don't sleep-walk to your amp bench, as we would like to hear back from you, as opposed to hearing from your family!

[Gollum]

So it turns out my house had a bad neutral, causing my voltage to swing from one side of the 120 to the other. So if my fridge turned on and it's voltage dropped to 110, the other side would have flipped to 130. Woohoo! (not really, pure internet sarcasim)

So, now I've got my first readings with good healthy voltage. Measured 119 at the fuse and power switch.

The 6L6 voltages were better that ever, within 5% of spec almost. But the preamp plate voltages were still exactly where they were before.

So I got a little more creative and decided to start being proactive about this. I pulled all the preamp tubes and exchanged them with other ones I had lying around. No change at all... So I started pulling them one at a time to see how much voltages would change, putting them back in once I verified they didn't chance anything much. Then I pulled V4 and my voltages shot up to almost exactly spec, and even a bit over spec on V2... Guess where that tube is? The reverb circuit. So I'm guess my reverb doesn't just completely suck, it's malfunctioning to some extent I bet.

To best describe how my reverb "works" when I crank the reverb all the way up there's a faint ring that almost sounds like feedback... People say these things reverb suck so I was never sure what to expect exactly.

Anyway, I'm not too interested in fixing the reverb so I should I just remove the reverb tubes or should I bypass the circuit all together?

For some reason I didn't think to double check the 6L6 voltages, but I'm betting those improved a bit as well, since the plates are all driven by the same power supply circuit.

I just can't wait to play it tomorrow with full wall voltages at a time of day I can actually turn it up.