Hello
The pics below show one of my 70's baubles which is is Nagatron "Z-Coupler" step-up transformer which is silver wound and a superb gadget according to my taste.
I had a visitor here on Saturday and during the melee, the toggle somehow got switched from its usual unbalanced position to balanced while I was setting the tt up to play an mc cartridge. I have an earthwire with a croc clip from my preamp laying near my turntable and which is used when I'm playing mm cartridges, clipped to my tonearm's earth. When the SUT is in use, my preamp is set to MM input and the turntable's earth wire is clipped to the SUT, never to the pre-amp's earth.
So anyway, when the amp and pre-amp was switched on and the turntable set up to play an mc needle, the SUT was in circuit, switched in error for some reason or other to balanced and the arm's earth clipped to my pre's earth tag.
And, there was no sound at all.
Later over the weekend, I opened the SUT's case and found to my amazement - all solder holding the connections to the SUT's inputs and outs had 'vaporised' - the wires still attached to their tags but not a trace of solder on them.
I have re-soldered all connections but haven't had a chance to hear if my bauble still works.
Would anyone have an idea what happened here?
mafioso
The pics below show one of my 70's baubles which is is Nagatron "Z-Coupler" step-up transformer which is silver wound and a superb gadget according to my taste.
I had a visitor here on Saturday and during the melee, the toggle somehow got switched from its usual unbalanced position to balanced while I was setting the tt up to play an mc cartridge. I have an earthwire with a croc clip from my preamp laying near my turntable and which is used when I'm playing mm cartridges, clipped to my tonearm's earth. When the SUT is in use, my preamp is set to MM input and the turntable's earth wire is clipped to the SUT, never to the pre-amp's earth.
So anyway, when the amp and pre-amp was switched on and the turntable set up to play an mc needle, the SUT was in circuit, switched in error for some reason or other to balanced and the arm's earth clipped to my pre's earth tag.
And, there was no sound at all.
Later over the weekend, I opened the SUT's case and found to my amazement - all solder holding the connections to the SUT's inputs and outs had 'vaporised' - the wires still attached to their tags but not a trace of solder on them.
I have re-soldered all connections but haven't had a chance to hear if my bauble still works.
Would anyone have an idea what happened here?
mafioso
