[TimMills]

I'm a little worried about posting this next bit of information in case I've done something dangerous or stupid or both....

but... as I've replaced all 4 valves and 4 x 470k resistors in the output stage today to make it all match up, I wanted to check I'd done it right and the solders and sound is good etc. so I powered it up having removed the preamp valves because there is currently 4 resistors removed from the preamp circuit R3 R5 R103 and R105. I put a line level into AUX from CD player and gave it an hour of exercise. It is sounding very sweet, very tight and really surprisingly quiet noise floor for an old bit of kit... The reason I'm telling you this is that I discovered that it seems to be generating about a quarter of the heat that it was generating when I first used it for a week when the preamp wasn't working but the valves and circuit were in place. Now I'm thinking is this the temperature it should be? it seems safer... was it getting so very hot before because something is very wrong in the preamp area?
If you could shed any light on this oddness I'd love to hear...
It seemed to be the 2 output transformers that were getting extremely hot before this test this evening.

thanks