Slowly waking up and old preamp

[hearingimpared]

I have a Spectral DMC 10 preamp that has been in storage for almost 20 years. It was hardly burned in when it went into storage. I intend on using it as part of a base-line system I am building. I spoke to Spectral's technical support today. I was told that it would probably be okay to hook it up to the external power supply it comes with and plug it into the wall but it would be better to wake it up slowly with a variac.

I remember making a poor man's variac 30 some years ago in tech school using various wattage light bulbs but I would rather use a variac . . . one problem though they are very expensive and I would only be using it this one time.

Any ideas on gettin a cheeper variac or know of place that may rent them out?

Thanks,
Joe

[Polkersince85]

How does a light dimmer work. Anybody tried this. Not an electronic one but one of the older rheostat tyoes. You may check some of the mom and pop electical shops that may do it for free.

[disneyjoe7]

Variac are completely different then a light dimmer. Light dimmers varies current by switching on and off so an AC wave is chopped up. Variac varies AC voltage in whole the AC wave is just smaller in size, nice and clean.

[unc2701]

The poor man's variac:
http://antiqueradio.org/dimbulb.htm

Really, that should be more than sufficient for your purposes.

[Libertyc]

Where in Philly are you? I live North of the city but travel there almost daily. I have a varic you can use. You also want to test out a standard SDA cable, which I have (3). Maybe we can do a temp swap. I would love to try your SDA A-1 interface on my 1.2's :D . Drop me a pm.

[schwarcw]

LibertyC, If you got a set bass braces for Joe he'd be estatic!:D

[RuSsMaN]

I'll variac it for you, if that's what you want. Send it on down.

Plug it in, and play. If it shits a couple caps, they needed to be replaced anyway.

Cheers,
Russ

[fredv]

How about buy the 49.95 from http://mpja.com/listitems.asp?dept=45 and ebay it when done.