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kgst


kevin gilmore

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Thanks to some kind souls here, I now have KGST boards (yay!) from headinclouds' group buy. Very happy about that. Now I have a question about the PSU board: which Gerber file package on KG's site does it correspond to? There's kgstpsu21.rar, but it's marked "Modified Blue Hawaii PSU v3.0", whereas the PSU board I have is simply marked "Version 1.0", with no mention of the amp it's meant for. The two boards look different in general, including 350V vs 400V labels (though I did not compare the parts component-by-component yet).

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I got a KGST up and running last night, haven't tested it with music yet. I'll probably have to swap out the tail resistor in series with the pot, getting 10~30V offset for each channel. This has happened to me on the KGSSHV as well, might be a good idea in the future to leave the tail resistor in a spot where it can be swapped more easily. 

 

That is, if we stick to the 1k trimpot

Edited by nopants
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Thanks insanity. Haven't populated the servo yet, but I'll get around to it eventually. Seems pretty stable without it already.

 

I was able to zero the offset by populating a 1.2k in the tail.

 

There's some low level hum in only one of the channels which is sort of annoying... aside from that it sounds very good. Keeping it in prototype form makes for some nice handwarmers this time of year. Slightly different vocal imaging compared to BHSE, more forward.

 

I might have to swap the Megatron for this at the office.

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Although I don't have that problem, I was wondering if the heater current could be rectified to prevent such a problem. Is there any negative effect of using DC for tube heating? Obviously there is the cost for an additional rectifier, but capacitors could probably be omitted. 

Edited by insanity
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From the experience on my past tube amps, by habit on my KGST build, I tightly twisted all paired wires. The result is it is dead quiet operation.

Now I am wondering how best to dress the wires between amp PCBs outputs to the Stax jack. Not sure what is best practice driving e-stats. Right now on my build they are twisted too, which would minimize capacitance in the pair. Scatter wired pairs would maximize capacitance. Maybe paralleled wires like the Stax cord would be the theoretical best?

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I finished my KGST recently. The fit was pretty tight in this 2U/330mm/280mm case. Had to reduce the 1.5kOhm resistor to get the offset to 0V though. Spritzer did mention a case this small would need a lot of ventilation, so I went with a pretty open top cover. Dead silent operation too. :)

 

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