Help on assembling an Aikido 5687 kit

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machtman
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#76

Post by machtman »

simon wrote: No substitute for a high powered iron, preferably temperature controlled at the tip. If you're struggling try non-silver solder.
I'm using a 50 W temperature controlled Amtex iron, and ended up adjusting the temperature differently for different jobs. It turned out the heatsink was no problem because I first soldered the voltage regulator which fixed it to the board, and then soldered the heatsink from above, which allowed me to put pressure on the copper around the hole and it went quite quickly. My biggest problems were with the metal canned caps, and the fact that if I couldn't get them soldered quickly, there was too much rosin about and it took forever for the solder to liquify.

I'm still very heavy handed but feeling more confident and slowly coming to grips with the matter.

Mark
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#77

Post by simon »

machtman wrote:Could you possibly be more specific and provide a manufacturer and part number for 440 V replacements for C5, C7 and C8 which are of high to very high quality?
Not really to be honest. I would try to use 450V versions of the same Broskie supplied. Others might be able to suggest some makes of caps? Just watch the physical size isn't too large to fit on the board and that the pitch of the +ve and -ve pins is the same...
machtman wrote:Again, if you can provide me with part numbers and recommendations, that would be great. There may have been a choice of caps and I took what I thought were better because they were more expensive.
Ask ten people for recommendations on coupling capacitors and you'd probably get 30 suggestions! Some swear by paper in oil, some prefer polypropylene, others wouldn't use anything less than silver gossamer wrapped in badger excreta. It's really difficult to make firm recommendations as coupling caps can be a taste thing, and you need to try different caps to see which you prefer. Indeed caps in general are a source of great discussion, dissatisfaction and argument!

Hi Fi Collective is a fair place to start as they have a range of caps and you can at least compare pricing. Beware, audiophool pricing really kicks in with audiophile caps. You pays your money and takes your choice.
http://www.hificollective.co.uk/catalog ... Path=61_68

So you could go for a nice Audio Note 1uF copper foil PIO - £60 each + vat
If you're really feeling flush how about their silver foil PIO - £648 each. Plus vat of course. Could you hear the difference? Only you would know that, but the money would probably be better spent elsewhere (chain is as strong as its weakest link etc.)

Claritycap make decent and relatively affordable PP caps. Their SA are a good standard and cost £3.26 each. Next step up is the ESA - £5.95 each, then they jump up to the MR at £22.58. I've only heard the SA, if it were me I'd probably go for the SA or ESA, but there are many, many valid choices.
machtman wrote:I note that all the vertical metal caps had white stripes and I put those in the -ve PCB hole and the longer leads at the other end in the +ve PCB hole. However, the Daytons, the bid red C4s and the quadratic C6's did not have any polarity markings and there was no polarity shown on the board for them.
The Daytons are polypropylene (I think) so not polarised, neither are the film and foil red rectangular caps. It's due to their construction I'm sure you'd find a good description pretty quickly if you googled. In fact I think Morgan Jones might cover this??? Anyway, lytics come in handy because they provide much greater capacitance for the same physical size as film and foil types. But nothing's perfect so there are always trade-offs.
machtman wrote:As to your recommendations on caps, this board has already cost so much for tools, input jacks, rotaries, TXs and now the case that I'm having built, that I'm not too concerned about the price of new caps, and simply want to be sure that the sound will not be compromised in any way due to trying to save money on caps. I also don't want to have to desolder more often than once more to try even better and more expensive caps.
Ah well, you're in the foothills of assembling a critical mass of bits so you can one day just look in your parts bin and build something on a whim :-). There really is no short cut to building "the best anything", you have to build and experiment. Not everyone wants to do that (generally the sane people!) so sometimes you have to make a choice and go with it. The Claritycaps will be fine - you might spend a lot more money on something more booteek and not actually prefer them.
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#78

Post by simon »

machtman wrote:The manual doesn't mention R23 and he didn't supply one. Similarly he didn't supply C3b. But there are holes for two R23 abd two C3b's on the board, which is why I was wondering whether they were needed and forgotten in the kit. For ecample, one resistor was inadvertebtly only supplied once where two were needed and I filled both of them with a matched pair from the resistor kit I bought on your recommendations.
Hmmm, I can't see either R23 or C3b looking at the diagram of the pcb in the back of the manual. I wonder if he's revised the board with the facility to have two coupling caps? Not that this would matter to you as you only plan on having the one.
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#79

Post by simon »

machtman wrote:I'm using a 50 W temperature controlled Amtex iron, and ended up adjusting the temperature differently for different jobs. It turned out the heatsink was no problem because I first soldered the voltage regulator which fixed it to the board, and then soldered the heatsink from above, which allowed me to put pressure on the copper around the hole and it went quite quickly. My biggest problems were with the metal canned caps, and the fact that if I couldn't get them soldered quickly, there was too much rosin about and it took forever for the solder to liquify.
There is a bit of an art to good soldering I guess, well perhaps not art but experience does help. I do the same - if I'm soldering to a large lump of metal - phono socket, heatsink etc. I turn the iron up full. Higher temperature for a shorter time is better than lower temperature for a longer time - damage can occur this way. You've probably got a small pointed tip in the iron too? Perfect for working on pcbs, but a large tip will heat work better when there's more copper and I usually change when I'm breadboarding/point to point.
machtman
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#80 caps ordered

Post by machtman »

simon wrote: There is a bit of an art to good soldering I guess, well perhaps not art but experience does help. I do the same - if I'm soldering to a large lump of metal - phono socket, heatsink etc. I turn the iron up full. Higher temperature for a shorter time is better than lower temperature for a longer time - damage can occur this way. You've probably got a small pointed tip in the iron too? Perfect for working on pcbs, but a large tip will heat work better when there's more copper and I usually change when I'm breadboarding/point to point.
Hi Simon
At the end I was using a larger tip for heavier soldering and it paid off with the heatsink. I have a variety of bevelled tips between 1 and 3 mm and normally use the 2.3 mm but shifted to 3 mm for that job.

I checked the Broskie manual and he does specify that you need more than the B+ voltage for C5. C7 and C8 and I've now ordered (Farnell) what he recommended as Nichicon caps with 400 or 450 V, which have lower uF than the ones I had put in before. They are the same size as the old caps.

I also looked at the other caps and he also said that 3 other positions needed at least B+ voltage. Two of them already had 400 V caps but C3 is only 250V. I toyed with the idea of splurging on Audio Note copper caps despite your recommendation but they would be even bigger than the ones I have now, which are too big so I ended up ordering 1 uF 400 V Clarity MR supreme from HiFi Collective, which were already expensive enough. These are smaller than the currently excessively sized C3 caps so no problems there.

Hopefully this will teach me to think more before ordering things, since all those caps were optional in Broskie's kit and are now wasted money. And the total price for the caps described above approaches the total cost of Broskie's lit including the caps. But now everything will have the appropriate voltage.

Re R23 and V3b, these is in the picture of the board in the manual I received but I don't want to play with alternate caps at this position and have no problems with not worrying about them.

Now I need to worry about the case.

Mark
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#81 Re: caps ordered

Post by simon »

machtman wrote:...so I ended up ordering 1 uF 400 V Clarity MR supreme from HiFi Collective...

Hopefully this will teach me to think more before ordering things, since all those caps were optional in Broskie's kit and are now wasted money.
It's all about perspective, I wouldn't think of them as wasted money, just stuff that's in stock for future projects :-).

The MRs are an interesting choice, I've only heard them in Nick's 2A3 pre amp (I think that's what he used anyway). It would be very interesting to hear how much better they are than the SAs and ESAs.

Nick, presumably you've found them to worth the extra?
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Nick
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#82

Post by Nick »

Yes, I like them. Not sure I can claim to have done a A/B but I have liked them in what I have used them in. Just building myself a jfet phono stage using them instead of ESA as the output cap, and I have another demo phono stage on its way back, so I can compare almost the same thing with different caps in the output..
Whenever an honest man discovers that he's mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or he will cease to be honest.
machtman
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#83 Low pass filter

Post by machtman »

Simon, I've finally done the calculations for R12 and R17 and the low pass filters they form together with C5, C7 and C8. Indeed with the values shown the R17 C7 and C8 combinations did give low pass filters at 3.6 Hz and now that I'm substituting a 47 uF C7 and C8, it gets even worse.

For Broskue' recommendations for 150 V the cutoff is 17 Hz

For Nick's 240 V it is 12.6

And for your recommended 300 V it is 33.9 Hz

This sounds lousy. However all these circuits affect the B+ voltage line and are nowhere near the output which goes through C6, R10, C3 and R8 if my crude understanding is correct. Why do I have to worry about a frequency cutoff on the B+ voltage?

Mark
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#84 double sided adhesive tape

Post by machtman »

Hi, the new caps have arrived and I've desoldered the old caps. Broskie's double sided adhesive tape is very impressive and it was a major struggle to get the Daytona caps liberated from the board, and there is no double sided adhesive tape left.

Desoldering the Dayotna's was so difficult that I think the copper may have lifted slightly from the board at the old holes that were being used. But the new Clarity caps are so much smaller that they will fit through other holes that are closer together and it shouldn't be a problem.

I've soldered the new Nichicon C5s and C7,C8. Using high heat and a larger tip made the work unproblematic. I'm waiting for a solution for new double sided adhesive before soldering the Clarity C3's.

It may be of general interest that lI ooked for providers of high quality double sided adhesive and stumbled on a company called PPI just down the road in Waterford. These people produce high tech tapes for the whole world and were extremely helpful. They are sending me a sample of a tape which is used for electronics, blocks vibrations, and bonds permanently on one side and reversibly on the other. I thought binding permanently to the cap side would make most sense such that they can be removed cleanly if the caps need to be replaced. If anybody wants to try this tape, I should have enough left over from the 5 m x 5 cm roll they are sending to spare some for other people.

Mark
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#85 Near final update

Post by machtman »

Dear Simon and all others
I was in temporary accomodations and then moving house for the past 6 weeks and have only now gotten my HiFi up again, or at least the turntable part.

Ant built me a wooden case for the Variac and for the Aikido. Fotos later. Very nice work on both except that the sockets for the jacks and control knobs are a bit inconvenient. He got everything done on time, which was a partial miracle because one shipment was refused for unknown reasons in my absence and a crucial tool was broken for a week. Otherwise superb work and highly recommended and many, many thanks.

I took everything related to the AIkido up to Halifax on 21 June and got to spend the Friday evening enjoying a superb Indian meal with Nick Gorham and David Brook. Thee next day, Saturday, was dedicatd to getting the Variac set up and the Aikido runniing. I only got two brief cigearette pauses and otherwise the whole day was Nick chugging away and me going ooh and ah. I don''t think I could have gotten it all together, especially since he was using an oscilloscope to test things and due to my lack of experience. On top of which he had to keep changing things. In the end the only problems we found were a resistor that had fallen off a pin, a cold soldering junction on one of the valve sockets and an indavertent soldering of output to a dead hole. The volume control is mounted and functional but we had to use the extender which had been intended for the input switch selector, which is now lying loose in the case. A second extender has just arrived from HiFi Collective but I havent found the time to fit it yet, and probably won'y for quite a while because the house is full of unpacked boxes. We were listening to music from a Touch through one of Nick''s new DACs through to a s.s. amp all day, including some that I had brought and know quite well. At the end of the day, we pluggeed the Aikido in behind the DAC and listened again. (SImon, this is with 300 V and your recommendations.)

Wow! It plays.Not only that it plays beautifully well. Nick says his DAC is providing digital-like sound with no colouration. ANd that the Aikido is bringing in some 5687 valve sound. All I know is that the music I was missing all day was suddently there again, and it wasn't the Touch or the DAC or the speakers but simply no valves anywhere (s.s. amp). I then took the Aikido back to the temporary hotel and didn''t touch it again till today.

Instead of being wise and setting up the HiFi I was used to in Cork and testing one new component after another, I simply installed everything new all at once into the system. This is a Something Solid stand from Mark at Deco Audio with big feet, my eBay purchases of a Verdier Aschenborn turntable with an SME3012 arm with Nextgen silver jacks and a 90th anniversary SPU cartridge, a Yannis (silver) phono cable and the Aikido. And this is in a room with different acoustics and different shape and lots of bare walls. With the speakers moved further from the walls because of optics and because my 4.5 m speaker cables aren't long enough to separate them further. ANd then I was expecting to hear the same sound I was used to in Cork!

Silly me! Instead everything sounds totally different, much richer mids, clearer bass, and a lack of the emphasis on the trebles that I am used to. It sounds like somebody else's HiFi rather than mine. But it does sound good, except that there is a slight current hum in the Aikido. So just on the off chance that the Aikido was making the difference, I exchange it for the S&B TVC preamp that Nick built me and is my pride and joy. Remote control with an Apple remote of input and volume and turns the valve-based phono stage on and off. And looks absolutely beautiful. No current hum. Absolutely clean sound. Could be a very high quality CD player for lack of noise. And sounds just like what my memory was like, with a clear emphasis on treble and weak mids and bass. And after 5 minutes, my wife, our visitor and I all agreed it was sterile in compaison to the Aikido and that we wanted to listen to the Aikido again. So it totally changes the musical emphasis but simply sounds much more musical on the TT. Now still have to compare them with the digital streamer but I'm sticking with the Aikido for the TT. It definitely rocks!!!!

Still have to compare different input sockets, different voltage, different resistors. Nick is building me a delay stage so the output sound first cuts in after 30 sec to avoid horrible noises while the valves are warming up, and I need to install the extension and mount the input knob. But basically for the first DIY HiFi project I've tried, this has been a resounding success.

all my best
Mark

PS The HiFi is running now in Kineton, a village equidistant from Stratfor on Avon, Banbury and Leamington Spa. All visitors interested in HiFi and DIY are welcome.
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#86

Post by simon »

Good stuff Mark, glad to hear you got it going and that it sounds good. You'll be thinking about your next project now :-)
machtman
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#87

Post by machtman »

simon wrote:Good stuff Mark, glad to hear you got it going and that it sounds good. You'll be thinking about your next project now :-)
Hi Simon,
somehow Gmail put the noification that somebody had responded in SPAM and I never noticed until now. I've been filing one report after another in a thread on the Art of Sound. The basic conclusion is that the Aikido sounds better than the TVCs with digital streaming as well, although the difference is not as extreme as for vinyl. The Verdier is sounding considerably better than the NOTTs, which I have decided to sell.

And after discussions with Nick, we have decided to give the Aikido an upgrade with extra boards to allow remote control of relay-driven attentuation through single resistors as well as input selection.

But I still need to compare the different voltages we had discussed and different brands of resistors, so I will be continuing to play with the Aikido sound for a while, and will report back here when that is done. But I also need to finish unpacking boxes and getting things mounted in the house we have moved into, and will be very busy for a while.

all my best
Mark
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