[lesparapluies]

Thanks for all recent advice. Had another session tonight and I've had a bit of a breakthrough. The general feeling was that if it were a faulty valve it would be the UCL82. As a belt and braces approach I ordered a UY85 as well. First tried substituting the UCL82 - no change. Then the UY85 - success (fingers crossed). The amp seems to run smoothly and the dropper resistor no longer gets hot. The voltages on the circuit are stable enough to be measured. I've done the following readings and I'd appreciate comments. I'm still running it through a bulb just to err on the side of caution, and the voltage on the mains in is about 200V. The 2 voltages are firstly without any signal applied and secondly with a signal (by which I mean touching the input and making the speaker buzz....) - here goes: across smoothing caps resistor: 2.4V (1.9V). Pin 3 of UCL82: 11mV / -7V. Pin 9 of UCL82: 72/79V. Across 470K resistor: 5mV / 6.6V. Should I be cautiously optimistic or is it getting ready to destroy the new rectifier as well?