I posted this on the Gear Page and Les Paul Forums as well but I thought I might put it here in case anyone can help me out...
I'm sitting down and revisiting some stuff that wasn't going quite right when I went through this the first time...
So I did the mod, which was pretty clever actually. They have you install a 1 ohm resistor onto pin 8 of the left-most power tube, so the resistor is the connection between the tube socket and circuit board. Then you connect a wire to the lead of the resistor/pin near the tube socket, and you solder a bias monitor test probe jack to the end of that wire. Then you clip the existing bias supply (resistor R87), and attach a wire to the top lead, which goes to a 10k bias pot.
You have to play around with the resistors that you have on the bias pot since they're made for different ranges, but the problem is I'm not getting a correct reading when I connect to the test probe jack and the chasis.
I should be getting somewhere between 28 to 35 millivolts and I'm only getting about 1.
The amp actually works, it just distorts even sooner than it was before. I tried biasing by ear by just replacing the first resistor on the bias pot with the highest value I had, and it didn't make the amp any less hot.
The more I think about it the less it seems any one out there would be able to help me from this description alone, but I appreciate anything I can get.
Ah and here's an interesting bit of information, it may be something wrong with my Blues Deville or maybe it's just the design but the filter caps are nowhere near lethal when the amp is turned off. It's less than 10 V for each one. They charge up a little when the amp is turned on, but they don't become dangerous until you go off of standby. Once you do the supposedly 350 V filter caps jump to only around 235 V, which I know will still kill you, but it's just less than 100 V less than what it should be for some reason. The two 500V caps are running at 420V and 380V respectively. I don't really need to know why these caps are running at less than they're supposed to, but if anyone knows I wouldn't object to hearing.
Looking forward to some replies...I learned a LOT with this little experiment.
"Music is the only thing that you can share with a million million people and you don't lose, you gain. It helps you to get energy and to live long, because when your soul is very happy then you don't want to die." - Ali Akbar Khan
So I'm gonna post something in the amp section at the Les Paul Forum and hope to get some direction...