Joule Electra VZN 100 Need help

The fact that you said one ran to bright and the other was not lit at all is probably because the bright one was getting 2x the power, as the other wasn't pulling any at all, sound plausible?.

Now that you have not power to the power tubes have you checked your fuses? Hopefully they are blown and they have protected your amps and no other damage was done. If you post a link to photos of your work I'll compare them to my amps for you.

Hey guys thanks for the posts.

I brought this on myself by wanting to rid the amps of those cheesy power cords. Simple enough but it wasn't. I didn't take any pictures like a total idiot. I assumed they were wired identically like an idiot. They are not. I measured all points with an ohm meter so that the amps measured the same. Bingo. NOT. Now neither one of them work.

I brought them over to Nick Gowan of Truesound, a tube amp guru repairman. He took a look and was in what I would term as dismay. "Reminds me of the old Audio Note amps". I think he has doubts whether he can get these working without any pics or documentation. They look like they were built in a garage. I think they were!

I've taken pics and sent them to Jud's repairman but he referred me back to Jud who simply told me to put the old cords back in. Followup emails have been ignored.

If Nick and I even knew they were to be wired in a similar fashion, that would be extremely useful.

Checked and ohmed the fuses. Checked the bridge rectifier. Checked everything I could check. Nothing looks broken other than some bulging caps. A simple (not so simple)miswire with no roadmap.

I agree with Johnthompson regarding full power to one amp. I'll try to upload pics to Flicker to post link.

Appreciate the help!
Pretty worried at this juncture.

Got it sorted out myself. In the end, I really could find a mistake in wiring. I just trimmed and reset all the connections. But something happened. There's no hum anywhere and the amps sound even more amazing.

Thanks again for your help.

computer restarted:)

Desalvo55, the tube sockets in that amp overheat as they were never intended to handle the filament currents that a 6C33 requires. So the filament connections tend to develop bad connections after a while. If the socket is not too far gone the filament connections (the 4 opposite the large pin) can be retightened and you will be good to go for a while.

Eventually though the socket will fail and should be replaced. This will be evident as tightening the filament pins will not seem to last so long before the tube won't light up properly again.

The Russians spec'ed the socket to be replaced every time the tube is replaced, as they primarily used the tube for military purposes. So when that tube first made it into this country (BTW we were the first US manufacturer to use them in a product) the socket was shipped with the tube.

In consumer gear though there is an expectation that the socket will last longer than that and they do. But you should be aware that they do have a service life that is measured in 1000s of hours rather than in years or decades like most tube sockets. Realistically I think you can get about 10,000 hours out of them- that will vary depending on how hot the amp is actually getting.

(FWIW it was this tube socket thing that convinced us to stay with the tubes that we use in our OTLs.)