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Another 6SN7 Extended Foreplay III lives

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Santa brought me an extended Foreplay III kit for Christmas. I had some time over the holidays, so I had at it.

As you may recall, my 6SN7 FPIII was a custom build, with just the tubes, pot, power switch and tranny on the top plate. The jacks and the IEC are housed on a separate plate on the rear. This proved to be the bane of the extended FPIII installation; since I didn't want to unhook everything on the rear plate, I had to keep the wooden base attached.

I built the circuit boards first, and they are a dream to work with and solder. Nice job Doc and PJ!

The installation directions were clear very easy to follow. Since I had already marked the 12AU7 to 6SN7 pinout conversions on the underside of the chassis plate, this expedited things as well. I'm still electronically challenged, so it took me about an hour to figure out how to "transpose" the installation instructions for the heater wiring to the reg tube. Duh — I finally realized all I had to was wire it as I had the first two signal tubes.

I had a hell of a time soldering the PS filter caps because of the tight fit due to the wooden base. I also managed my first cold joint ever. When I was checking the resitance, I clipped a lead to a terminal on the rectifier bridge and a rectifier went ting! It was held in place only by flux resin. A reheat of the joint fixed that in a hurry.

Being electronically challenged, I fear builds like this because they're so involved — miss one step and you could be hosed. Especially on a custom build. So I double checked everything as the instructions suggested. Good. Resistance checked out. Time for the dreaded smoke test. Power comes on, LEDs light up, no smoke billows forth — voltages check out!

So, how's it sound? I've got to let it play for about a week to give things a chance to burn in. But I can tell you this: it's going to be great!





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