I came upon an old ST70 that had really been neglected, and was able to buy it for $150. The chassis was bad but not terrible, the quad cap had clearly been leaking, the output transformers were long gone, the power transformer was rusty and the power cord was missing. It did have 4 EL34's and a rectifier tube. I put it in my shop and started accumulating parts. Having already built a VTA that I was really happy with I bought a blank PCB from Roy and scrounged around for parts.
As I found parts I put them in here and there, and eventually ordered the missing parts from Digikey and the OPT's from Dynakitparts.com. I finally finished it this morning, crossed my fingers and ran it up on the variac. I am happy to report that the power transformer is fine, the rectifier glowed and 3 of the 4 EL34's lit up. The cleaned up chassis is not beautiful but it's presentable. It needs to burn in (I used the Russian PIO's) but it sounds great.
Here is my question. What should I do with it? Should I biamp my speakers? Should I wire in some rear speakers and drive them with the 2nd amp? Should I run it as a separate system in my workroom (seems like overkill, I've always just had an old radio)? I do not want to sell it because I feel like I rescued it from the dead. Anyway, it's a nice problem to have.
As I found parts I put them in here and there, and eventually ordered the missing parts from Digikey and the OPT's from Dynakitparts.com. I finally finished it this morning, crossed my fingers and ran it up on the variac. I am happy to report that the power transformer is fine, the rectifier glowed and 3 of the 4 EL34's lit up. The cleaned up chassis is not beautiful but it's presentable. It needs to burn in (I used the Russian PIO's) but it sounds great.
Here is my question. What should I do with it? Should I biamp my speakers? Should I wire in some rear speakers and drive them with the 2nd amp? Should I run it as a separate system in my workroom (seems like overkill, I've always just had an old radio)? I do not want to sell it because I feel like I rescued it from the dead. Anyway, it's a nice problem to have.
