Thoughts on Audio Research D70

@DaveyF: No other offender. I am comparing it with my 6 other amps in the room.
Vac Phi 70 monos
Counterpoint NP220 Premium gold
Jolida 502 thats "re" modified from an already modified unit
just to name a few.

@hifigeek1: Thanks a lot for the suggestions.
I myself hate using NOS power tubes, I pity those who generic Sovteks and Svetlanas remarked as whatever the hell reissue and give them names like Black voodoo and blue snake oil. Chinese tubes even to this date are a complete joke. Just sad to see the feeding frenzy for those 50 year treasures. I myself use Svetlanas or Sovteks. They dont sound as good as the NOS stuff but with balancing and tweaking of the gain and driver stages I can live with the imperfections of run of the mill and reasonably priced power tubes.

Thank you very very much for the pointers. I scope the regulated B+s carefully. Thanks for the tip on measuring the 27k resistor. Been bitten before by a few resistors on my VT130 which measured wierd...disintegrated when I tapped them with a chopstick.

I am giving up on Hexfreds on this one, no way I can safely mount them unless I can find ones in smaller than T0220 package.

Thanks again.

@Hifigeek1 you are talking about the 270k drop resistor R75 thats a protection bleeder across the main B+ filters right? I cant seem to find a 27k in the schematic. Is that a WW or a Carbon comp?

Hmm I think I found it, goes from ground to pin4 of TL071, big 7W WW resistor. 26.4k and holding stable no change with tapping.

That's the one. Also make sure you measure 10 ohms at ground to common tap at output transformer.

all measured OK. Thanks HifiGeek1 for the pointers.

Took me 2 hours to carefully pull all the wondercaps and Relcap coupling caps out, and another 2 hours almost to install k40y9s into the amp (size and metal casing does NOT help at all).
The foggy when low volume and glare at high volume problem is mostly gone.
I get a lot more natural and airy sound with strings.
More to do but at least this IMO is going absolutely the right direction.