Testing Output Transformers

You can fairly quickly determine if a transformer is grossly bad. This does not say anything about the subtleties of it's tone, only that it is functioning. Tests of relative tonal "goodness" are also possible, but require a lot of equipment and experience to do correctly. For the tests described here, you'll need an ohmmeter for the simplest testing, and for more advanced tests, a means of measuring AC voltage and current simultaneously, such as a pair of VOMs or DMMs, and a 110/120 to 6.3VCT filament transformer, and either a variac (variable transformer) or a light bulb socket in series with the primary of the filament transformer to limit the power you put into the transformer under test.
If you do the advanced tests, be aware:
Both the filament transformer and the transformer under test will have at least AC line voltage on them, an may well have much higher voltage, several hundred volts on one or more windings. You are therefore in danger of being KILLED if you are not both knowledgeable and careful about how you do these tests. These tests are clearly hazardous as defined in the warnings section of this page.

Simple Tests

Unplug the amp and drain the capacitors before you start. Do not remove the transformer from the amplifier before you start. Remove the output and rectifier tubes.
Identify which wires are which by circuit connection. The primary will have two (single ended), three (push pull, or very rarely single ended with ultra linear tap), or five (push pull with ultralinear taps) leads. Noting which leads connect to the B+ line, measure the resistance from the B+ lead to each plate of the output tube(s). Write the resistance reading down. Measure the other side if it's puah pull. Plate windings are almost always in the tens to a few hundred ohms of resistance. A reading much over 1K is pretty sure sign that the winding is burned open. If it's open, the transformer is dead. [There are ways to fix "slightly-dead" transformers, but this is extremely risky, and probably doomed to failure. I'm not going to write down how. Don't waste your time.]
While you're at it, measure the resistance of every lead to the chassis. This reading should be very high, hundreds of K or preferably megohms. A low reading here indicates a short to the transformer core - again, dead transformer.
Do a similar test on the secondaries - look for open windings, or shorts to the core. Finally, test for the resistance from primary to secondary. A low value, under a few K indicates an internal short, and a dead transformer.
If the transformer fails any of the simple test, it's dead. Replace it. If it passes all of the simple tests, it may still have an internal short Sometimes a primary will have enough resistance that the transformer does not burn up or burn the wires in two , but will just bog down, have low power and sound bad. If you suspect that is the case and you don't have the skills to do the advanced tests, take it to a competent tech.

Advanced Tests

Do the shorts/opens tests above first.
Then:
Identify a secondary winding, 8 ohm tap if it's available, and hook up one and only one winding to either 1/2 of the 6.3VCT or to the variac. Make D^&%ED sure the variac is all the way down if you're using one of those. Make sure that no other leads are connected (or shorted together, or touching your screwdriver on your bench or... well, you get the idea). Check for safety load resistors on the output jacks or secondary windings. These can cause you to erroneously think it is bad. There must be no loads on any winding. Put your voltmeter on the winding, and the current meter to measure the AC current through it, hook up the 3.15 VAC source, and turn on the AC - not to the amp, but to the AC feeding the winding you're driving. The voltmeter should measure 3.15 (or close) volts AC, the light bulb (if used) should NOT be lit brightly, and nothing should be humming or smoking ;-). There should be only a little current going through the winding. If the voltage is lower than 3 volts, or you are pulling amps of current, then there is a load on the transformer, internally since you have disconnected all the leads, meaning that there is an internal short. (Which means that you ought to be sure that there is no other load on the transformer, because you're going to throw it away if it has an internal short - be sure you're right!)
If all is well, no smoke, flames, loud hum, poultergeists, or lightning, measure the voltage that now appears on the other windings. The voltages will be equal to the ratios of the voltages that will appear on these windings in normal operations. For the primaries of output tubes, this can be up to a couple of hundred volts, so don't think that you can relax your safety precautions - it can still kill you, even driven with 3VAC on the secondary of the output transformer. The half-primaries of the output transformer should have identical voltages on them. Secondaries should have multiples of the voltage you're putting on the tap you chose. If you used an 8 ohm tap, a 4 ohm tap will have about 2.3VAC on it, a 2 ohm tap will have 1.6VAC on it, and a 16 ohm tap will have about 4.5VAC on it.
If the transformer passes all these tests, it's almost certainly good.

REF: Geofex

How do I find the actual wattage an amplifier is putting out?

It is actually quite tricky to measure this accurately.
The reason is that the power depends on the impedance of the load (i.e. the speaker) and the latter can be VERY frequency dependent for a real speaker.

Another problem is that the "maximum power" is not really that interesting, the distortion increases with power and at some point the amplifier will start clipping, this is not really big problem initially (at least not if the amplifier is clipping "gently") but sooner or later you will reach a point where the music sounds terrible and -worse- you risk destroying your speakers (an amplifier that is clipping outputs DC that heats up the voice coil).

Hence, measuring power of an amp feeding a speaker in "real time" is therefore somewhat tricky; the only way to do it is to measure both the voltage and the current from the amp but that is NOT something I would recommend unless you know what you are doing (voltage is not the problem, but measuring the current is).
The result will also depend on how long you are averaging (i.e.. the "time window") since peak power can be MUCH higher than the median power for real music.

Anyway, the standardized test is to measure the voltage across a 8 Ohm power resistor at 1% distortion and then calculate the power from P=V^2/R. This is what the wattage rating of an amp means.

REf : f95toli

Popless mute switch for Condender mic.

Popless Mic On/Off Switch

Many microphone users want to insert a mute button in-line with a mic cable. When you use a dynamic mic, all you have to do is short XLR pins 2 and 3 together to mute the mic. But with a condenser mic, shorting pins 2 and 3 can cause a click or pop.
The cause is phantom-power imbalance. If the phantom DC voltage on pin 2 is higher or lower than on pin 3, you get a pop when you flip the on/off switch. Bob Stadtherr, of Bob Stadtherr Engineering, kindly supplied us with a circuit to prevent this problem. Stadtherr describes the circuit shown below:

This is essentially a lowpass filter, with a cutoff frequency around 1 Hz (assuming a 150 ohm mic impedance). The 10K resistor allows the capacitor to charge to the DC voltage between the lines, so when the switch is closed, no change to the DC levels occurs.
Pin 2 might be positive relative to pin 3, or vice versa. So the capacitors should be non-polarized. To create the 1000 uF capacitor, you could use two 470 uF polarized capacitors in parallel, wired in opposite polarity.
Thanks for your suggestion, Bob! The figure below shows how to add an LED to this circuit. Use a DPDT switch and a 9V battery. It can be wired so that the LED comes on when the mic is on, or when the mic is off. In the figure below, the DPDT switch is shown pictorially rather than schematically. The components in the figure below are the same as those in the figure above.

Some people have had better luck using a switch in parallel with a potentiometer, both across pins 2 and 3. You adjust the potentiometer until there is no voltage difference between pins 2 and 3, then throw the switch to short pins 2 and 3 together.

Strange Cables

2 phono to one male xlr.

Some pubs have a mono female xlr socket to run from the dj booth to the amps in a back room.
Not ideal but does the job!

Gotta love that genuine mono sound!!

http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/connection/xlr-rca-2.html

LED

Capacitance Calculator

Here's a handy capacitance calculator.

http://www.calculator.org/property.aspx?name=capacitance

Balanced vs unbalanced

 An unbalanced audio path has two conductors. One carries the audio signal and the other is the shield/ground. There is nothing at all wrong with an unbalanced signal but at times can be susceptible to picking up interference from radio frequencies or electromagnetic fields that cause noise and buzz.

A balanced signal has three conductors. It relies on a sum and difference principal.
Sum and difference is the combining (summing) of two signals that are out of phase from each other. Whatever doesn’t cancel out is what you’re left with (difference).
When two identical signals of identical amplitude (volume) are combined and one is 180 degrees out of phase from the other you have complete cancellation of that audio. However, if one of those signals is a different amplitude, you don’t get complete cancellation. And it’s this principal that makes a balanced audio path work.
The output from a balanced piece of gear will have the audio signal on pin 2 (hot). That same signal will be present on pin 3 (cold) however that signal is at a lower amplitude than the signal on pin 2. The shield/ground will be on pin 1.
When the signal reaches a balanced input, the signal on pins 2 and 3 are combined with either pin 2 or pin 3 (usually pin 3) out of phase. If that cable happens to pick up interference along the way, it will be on all pins, in phase together and at the same amplitude. When it gets to the input, pins 2 and 3 are combined out of phase and any signal exhibiting the same amplitude (the noise) will cancel out completely. Since the audio is at different amplitudes, it doesn’t cancel out and you’re left with the difference: clean audio!
As for the mics, most all are designed with a balanced output and should be plugged in to the balanced input of a microphone amplifier (pre-amp)
Plugging a mic into an unbalanced input won’t ruin anything but mics generate a very low level signal that needs lots of gain to bring it up in level. Amplifying a signal that much benefits from the noise canceling of a balanced connection