Last night my tube amp broke down. It was working fine until suddenly the tubes stopped glowing and the high voltage supply stopped working. After some troubleshooting I found the culprit (the main transformer).
It was not easy to find the problem because all the components I tested seemed to be fine. After narrowing down the problem to the transformer itself, I connected it to an autotransformer and slowly increased the voltage. It worked fine until about 60V, after I increased the voltage further, it suddenly started arcing somewhere internally and it basically shorted out (the pair of alligator clips I was using started melting and smoking after just a few seconds :blobfoxlaughsweat:). When I lowered the voltage, it stopped arcing and worked fine again.
The transformer is unfortunately very expensive, so I think the amp will be retiring now. I was planning on building a new, bigger and better one anyway, but it's still sad to see an old project “die” like this
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