Slowly waking up and old preamp

hearingimpared
hearingimpared Posts: 21,136
edited September 2006 in Electronics
I have a Spectral DMC 10 preamp that has been in storage for almost 20 years. It was hardly burned in when it went into storage. I intend on using it as part of a base-line system I am building. I spoke to Spectral's technical support today. I was told that it would probably be okay to hook it up to the external power supply it comes with and plug it into the wall but it would be better to wake it up slowly with a variac.

I remember making a poor man's variac 30 some years ago in tech school using various wattage light bulbs but I would rather use a variac . . . one problem though they are very expensive and I would only be using it this one time.

Any ideas on gettin a cheeper variac or know of place that may rent them out?

Thanks,
Joe
Post edited by hearingimpared on
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Comments

  • Polkersince85
    Polkersince85 Posts: 2,883
    edited September 2006
    How does a light dimmer work. Anybody tried this. Not an electronic one but one of the older rheostat tyoes. You may check some of the mom and pop electical shops that may do it for free.
    >
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  • disneyjoe7
    disneyjoe7 Posts: 11,435
    edited September 2006
    Variac are completely different then a light dimmer. Light dimmers varies current by switching on and off so an AC wave is chopped up. Variac varies AC voltage in whole the AC wave is just smaller in size, nice and clean.

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  • unc2701
    unc2701 Posts: 3,587
    edited September 2006
    The poor man's variac:
    http://antiqueradio.org/dimbulb.htm

    Really, that should be more than sufficient for your purposes.
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  • Libertyc
    Libertyc Posts: 915
    edited September 2006
    Where in Philly are you? I live North of the city but travel there almost daily. I have a varic you can use. You also want to test out a standard SDA cable, which I have (3). Maybe we can do a temp swap. I would love to try your SDA A-1 interface on my 1.2's :D . Drop me a pm.
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  • schwarcw
    schwarcw Posts: 7,341
    edited September 2006
    LibertyC, If you got a set bass braces for Joe he'd be estatic!:D
    Carl

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  • RuSsMaN
    RuSsMaN Posts: 17,986
    edited September 2006
    I'll variac it for you, if that's what you want. Send it on down.

    Plug it in, and play. If it **** a couple caps, they needed to be replaced anyway.

    Cheers,
    Russ
    Check your lips at the door woman. Shake your hips like battleships. Yeah, all the white girls trip when I sing at Sunday service.
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  • fredv
    fredv Posts: 923
    edited September 2006
    How about buy the 49.95 from http://mpja.com/listitems.asp?dept=45 and ebay it when done.

    -fredv-
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