Tandberg Silver Output Boards

In celebration of the long overdue arrival of the Silver Edition of the output boards, I am posting a complete photo gallery to show just how far things have progressed.

First, apologies for those who have been waiting on boards. My manufacturer is usually very prompt but the high quality of materials which I specified is unusual. When I ordered another customer had just depleted their stock, and they were not prepared. The end result is that I just received the shipment of boards this past Thursday, March 8th.

Orders will be going out this Saturday, March 10th at the latest. Without keeping you in further suspence, here it is, front and back:

Notice the full solder mask and silk screen. You may also notice that the annular rings appear white instead of shiny, this is actually because of the silver content, lead free plating that was used.

Since this is probably the last posting I make about these boards, I'm going to do a full comparison between them and the originals, so please bear with me.

The next picture you see is a composite of the original board. As you can see, while the original used a single side for the ground plane as well as the traces while the 2.0 boards use a double sided board.


By having one side for the traces and another for the ground planes I could design the board with three separate, massive ground planes and optimally routed traces, with better clearances and thicker traces. In combination with the 2.5 oz. copper and silver plating the Silver Edition boards are going to be a large improvement.

I also wanted to share with you were pictures of the Cardas jacks so you can compare them with the originals.



I swiped this picture right off the Cardas web site, I hope they don't mind, but since each board takes 7 of them I think they will be ok with it, so long as I remind you that they have nothing to do with the design, manufacture or sale of the boards.

They look good don't they? Rhodium over silver over brass, oh my!











Here you can see four of the jacks I removed from the original board. Tin and plastic is really all there was to them. Keep in mind that the way these jacks were attached to the board was by bending over the three little tabs onto the board. What has happened a great deal in the years since Tandberg stopped making audio equipment is that male RCA plugs have gotten much tighter and heavier, especially in premium cables. So users would press their new cables into the jacks with all of their might, and unless the tabs were really tight up against the board, there would be just enough motion to literally lift the tabs off of the circuit boards from behind. The Cardas jacks don't use bendable tabs, by the way. The four prongs are thick rhodium/silver/brass which attach with a significant amount of solder.

By the way, sadly, many Tandberg tuners are having problems with the internal connectors separating from the copper on the boards. I think this has a lot to do with the size of the annular rings around them being too small for the solder to get a good grip. My point is, if you are going to replace this board, check all the other connectors you'll be exposing, on the power supply as well as the output stage board. If there is any play, resolder them.

I want to leave you now with two beauty shots.

The first is a picture of the fully assembled prototype board.

While not as professional looking as the Silver boards you can see the ground plane and the beefiness of the jacks. Those of you who have experience looking at the insides of tube gear may feel a twinge of nostalgia.




And this is what the jacks should look like after installation. Please drool carefully.