Final 2 evenings of building...

All that was left was the signal path:

• Shielded cables from the RCA jacks to the driver board (black)
• Driver board to driver tube connections (upper center)
• Coupling capacitors (yellow) from the driver to the power tubes
• Power tube to power transformer (green wire)
• Power transformer to speaker binding posts (blue/brown twisted pairs)

From the bottom

From the top (power transformer cover still unfinished)

After inserting the tubes and powering up, I was shocked when the high voltage fuse blew, but not the mains fuse.  It took me hours of looking for a short in the tube sections before I realized, it was the rectifier. I hadn't realized the hexfred heat sink lugs were not floating but tied to the fricken cathode!  Thank god I decided to add the high voltage fuse or my power supply would have been toast.  I added nylon isolation spacers between the panel and the hexfreds and then all was good.  Voltages were within 1% of my original prototype.  This was my first test of the dual channel biasing knob.  In hindsight, a multi-turn pot would have offered finer adjustment, but I probably would have paid $80 for a stereo multi-turn pot.

It was late, but I hooked up some speakers and a CD player, popped in "Are you going with me" (Pat Metheny), turned off the lights and sunk into my comfy chair and blissed out watching the blue glow of the output tubes dance to the repetitious two note groove and then Pat's explosive climax.  Sorry, that started to sound like a penthouse forum.  60 cycle hum was more that I would have liked, but par for the course in a directly heated output tube with AC heaters.  Other than that, I'm very happy with this amp.

Remaining work is mainly aesthetic:

• Add venting and paint the power transformer cover
• Final sand and oil the wood frame
• Glue the frame
• Add corner blocks, bottom mesh and vibration dampening feet
• Finish and install the aluminum tube socket covers