[RitchieMars]

Hey guys, I think I've figured out a big part of my problem! It all started when I asked some guys over at AK about my 10-inch speaker and someone pointed out that what I likely had was an "electrodynamic" speaker and sure enough, that's exactly the case. I looked into this and found that running a radio such as this with the speaker disconnected put's a burden on the first electrolytic capacitor right after the rectifier as a result of the speaker's field coil being absent from the circuit. Most testing I did involved the speaker being plugged in, but the last time I ran the Admiral, it was without the speaker just to poke around and see where my B+ voltages were looking like. I powered up the radio only twice in this manner, and on the second attempt was when the rectifier blew.

Going back my chassis recently, I discovered that my first 20uF filter cap is SHORTED! Apparently, it suffered under the heavy load and since that capacitor goes straight to ground, it's understandable why the rectifier went when it did. If I am to understand this design correctly, there would have been the possibility of a rare "perfect storm" scenario. Consider the possibility of a broken speaker wire, or a shorted field coil, a filter capacitor with a tolerance no greater than 350 ( mine was a 450 and still died! ) and the known defects of the 6X5 tube... and what do you have? A dead filter capacitor, a dead rectifier, and perhaps even a fried transformer. Yikes!

So, I'm in for a new 6X5 ( maybe just for looks ), some fuses, a new 20uF electrolytic, a Y2 safety cap, and some resistors and perhaps a couple spare caps to fill out the minimum order. I'll let you know how it turns out!