The Heathkit AA-32
Good ol' Ebay
About 20 years ago I bought a sealed Heathkit AA-23 for about $200 and stuck it in a closet. I felt an affinity to it because at that time I was working in a building Benton Harbor, MI that some of the Heathkit operations had used. The last copyright date on the materials I could find was 1969.
Huge respect for people back then that could assemble this as a beginner with limited experience. Society must have been better and more practical back in the day.
When I opened it everything looked brand new.
I replaced the electrolytic caps with modern equivalents.
The tubes are what you would expect from a 1960's budget kit amp, 6EU7s and the venerable 6GW8/ECL86 combo output tube.
The next pictures show the buid-up of the parts. I have been building things for quite a while and this thing was a challenge. Part of it was the 34 page step by step instructions with non-intuitive
"Connect a 4-1/2" wire from lug 1 of terminal strip D (S-3) to lug 1 of terminal strip E (S-2)"
Looking up pictures of which terminal strip/lugs etc was headache inducing. Ended up with just using the pictures and the schematic.
I uprated the voltage doubler from the supplied 30uf caps to 200uf caps and UF rectifier diodes. I also used the Sprague Orange Drop 716p instead of the supplied caps as they looked rather powdery. I also added a 100uf cap at the end of the chain to keep everything quiet. The amp has virtually no hum despite the tiny 1" shallow chassis. Full phono stage and bass/treble controls too. It sounds like an amp, decent highs and bass for its 8 watt output.
(One of the 6GW8 tubes did not survive hibernation so waiting on a replacement.)
