Decware se 84 cs owners manual

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Owners ManualDECWARE / High Fidelity Engineering Co. 1202 N.E. Adams Street Peoria IL 61603 USA 309-671-2428 Fax 309-672-1060 e-mail: fidelity@decware.com www.decware.com (C)2000 All Rights ReservedGETTING STARTED Save your shipping carton. It has been designed to withstand the abuse of UPS. We tested it by dropping amps off the roof of our facility onto the parking lot. The fact that your amp is perfect condition is testimony that shipping carton works. Should you ever need to send your amp back for warranty repairs, or trade it in on something else, you will NEED the original shipping carton. TUBES Your amp comes with premium tubes. The output tubes are from SVETLANA and are made in St. Petersburg, Russia. These special tubes were originally designed for video applications in the Russian military. Because of this, they have much wider bandwidth than common audio tubes. The output tubes that come with your amplifier are factory matched and should last be- tween 4 months and 2 years depending on the sensitivity of your speakers and how often you clip the amp. The input tube (smallest one) can be either a 6N1P, a 6DJ8, or a 6922. Each ef- fect a different signature so it is nice to collect all three for experimentation. Any 5U4 rectifier will work (largest tube) and the popular 6BQ5/EL84 output tubes can be used in place of the SV83 output tubes as a direct plug-in replacement. Look at the photo on the front of this manual to see which tubes go where. Now that you know which tubes do what, carefully install them into the amplifier. The rectifier (5U4) should last for many years. If your amplifier was shipped with a Chinese 5U4 you will no- tice a small flash inside the tube when you first turn on the amp, and you will hear a mechanical vibration inside the tube as it resonates with 60 cycle ac. This causes no harm to the amplifier and is no cause for alarm. Most 5U4 tubes (especially new old stock USA made tubes) do not do this, but of the current manufactured 5U4 tubes available, we feel the Chinese is one of the better sounding. BEFORE POWERING UP Be sure that you always have speakers connected to this or any tube amp before turning it on. Tube amps are typically the opposite of solid state in that you can short the speaker wires together and nothing bad will happen.DECWARE

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Owners ManualDECWARE / High Fidelity Engineering Co. 1202 N.E. Adams Street Peoria IL 61603 USA 309-671-2428 Fax 309-672-1060 e-mail: fidelity@decware.com www.decware.com (C)2000 All Rights ReservedWith your speakers and line level source connected, you can turn the amplifier on by flipping the switch on the rear. The switch on the front is not the power switch, but rather a bias adjustment for the input tube. It may be operated in either position, but should be changed only when the amplifier is turned off. After allowing the amplifier to warm up for a few minutes, you can slowly raise the volume (also located on the rear)to the desired listening level. DURING OPERATION After about 30 minutes you will notice the amplifier getting very warm. This is intentional, the higher temperatures brought on by the pure class A operation push the fidelity higher. Some ar- eas of the chassis may be hotter than others. This is normal. However, proper ventilation is rec- ommended. If you operate the amplifier inside a cabinet, allow a minimum of 4 inches on the sides, and 10 inches above if possible. The output tubes have a glass temperature of 200 degrees centigrade by design, and you can be assured that they will be that hot if you touch them or your cat decides to lick one. This is important to consider with the rather extremist option of front input jacks. Naturally if you use these jacks, routing of your interconnects is important. If they touch the output tubes, they will surely melt, unless of course you have our silver/Teflon cables that will not melt. The last heat related comment is this - turn your amp off when your not using it. Tube life is di- rectly tied to hours of operation so there is no point wasting it when your not listening. INITIAL BREAK-IN EXPERIENCE Unfortunately the esoteric parts in this SELECT amplifier besides being extremely fast, also need to break-in. The combination of a fast amplifier and fresh parts can be a little rude so we will explain the process. Specifically it is the exotic capacitors that actually require the burn-in to sound right. The fastest way to achieve a burn-in is to play the amplifier for 5 hours and then turn it off and let it rest for at least 5 hours.DECWARE