I asked a question above about obvious errors on the preceding two photos. Did anyone see any? Of course it is easy for me to see because I made and corrected those fupas. I will point them out this post and add a couple.
The pic below circles the areas that were corrected in green. Starting from the top left's green circle the common output tube cathode capacitor is an electrolytic 1000uf that IS installed correctly with + oriented toward the cathode. When I replaced the strapped 100 ohm resistor with a 150 ohm it was placed in reverse as shown in the picture in question blowing the cap.
The middle circled circuit is a bonus addition of a snubber circuit given to me by the audio god's disciple while eating a late dinner and browsing. This circuit separates the audio ground from chassis ground. This helps to eliminate more background noise. It helped the clone even further reduce a faint buzz after what the OP tranny observation with screws played on hum.
The bottom circled input cable connection shows the correct way to install a shield provided by the made up cable. The shield is connected to both grounds of the inputs and floating at the outer end(cut short about an inch from the input tubes cathodes and sealed inside the outer layer of the cable). As shown in the questioned pic wrapping the silver wire around the two insulated conductors in that fashion created an antenna that basically picks up all the noise in the clone's circuits. When it was powered up the hiss was loud and the amp started oscillating in short order. When I was making the cable there was 2' of silver wire left so I though why not. Wrong!
So again I answered my questions with more questions that leads too good success
The pics below expand on the metal covers removal from the Edcor recommend output trannies of the Zkit1 that were installed in my kit and used in the clone. Edcor does not heavy coat trannies with lacquer that are destined for the bell covers. The coating can be easily nicked even with careful handling unlike the transformers without covers that have a heavy coat and protective metal cover on the perimeter of laminations. As can be seen in this pic the circled part of the lamination corner edged has a slight scraping. It was most likely caused from rubbing the
deburred edge of the clone's top plate while I was trying to figure out a mounting scheme. So it don't take much to mar the soft laminations!
This magnified pic shows the bridging of laminations that resulted. This little slight short caused the otherwise stable Edcors to saturate very easily when the right channel Crystal speaker started to impose its own impedance.
I used a brass brush to work the shorted bridge out as seen below.
I now have 35 hours music playing time on the clone. It just keeps improving. I am starting to pick up errors on CDs never noticed before. Kind of like time slows down and those errors are given more time to show. In reality, the errors are expanding nuances on themselves with the clone. Meaning, when played back on a phone with headphones and knowing where to look the error is a quick blip that is hardly noticeable.
Did Steve go too far with the anniversary? Nope
John