If anyone is still looking for a SLP-98

@immatthewj 

Hope to be touching base with you one of these days to talk tubes. Have a problem from the get go. No power to the line stage side. No idea what is up. PS seems too warm. Don't know what to make of it. 3 tube preamps in a row with something wrong. I know they all worked before coming to me. My luck. 

@billpete do you think you'll just return it -or- possibly asking the seller to take it to a local tech to figure out where the power stops at the PS or tracing through inside the preamp with a volt meter etc - 

Was it flopping around in the box when you unpacked it?  Being careful to not arch across the caps, can you tell if anything came loose inside rattling itself apart during shipping?

@decooney 

Trying to figure that out now. I didn't notice anything but I'm not the one who should be looking. I can see if something broke or got disconnected but that's about it. I talked with the guy I bought it from and he's a bit baffled. I do not want to send it back. I want it to work. Will have to see what a few people have to say. Might be something very simple. I do not know. 

@decooney 

@harpo75 

@immatthewj 

OK, it's official. I'm an idiot. I had the umbilical on wrong. No idea how that's even possible but it was. All is well now, probably just took some hours off the PS caps making it too warm. Good grief. I'm a happy boy now. It even sounds good with croppy new tubes. 

Ahhhh yes.  The is a nub on the connector that fits into the notch on the chassis’s jacks.  Always have to make sure you get that in the groove. 
If it’s working you may have lucked out.  It was probably shorting the transformer and so got hot.  Lucky it didn’t fry it.  
About the only real failure I see on these is the bridge rectifier in the power supply.  Typically though the SLP-98’s just work for years.