[Johnson] valiant audio problems

[johnson@mailman.qth.net]

howdy men
This will be somewhat long. Put on your thinking caps :)

My valiant has some quirky problems with the audio. I can use an 
astatic 10DA and I get PLENTY of audio. In fact I only have to turn 
the gain up to about the 10 or 11 o'clock position to get all the 
audio I need. BUT when I use the D104 I have to turn the audio gain 
up nearly all the way and it sounds like poop.

Now, this is my original Valiant I have had since I was a yonker. I 
had loaned it out three years ago and the fellow I loaned it too 
prompty traded it to another ham for a rice box! That ham traded it 
to someone else, who traded it to another ham that I happened to 
know, so I got it back by trading off my Apache for it. Somewhere 
along this path, it had its microphone chassis connector changed 
out to a CB type 4 pin plug.  When examining it, it looked like it 
had been wired up by a drunk monkey with a blow torch! I found a
PAIR of cermet 474K resistors in parallel, in place of the 1 Meg 
Resistor that was supposed to be there ( grid input of first audio 
stage)   This pair of resistors in parallel were reading real squirrely
with my DVM and in fact, ranged up and down from 5 Meg ohm to
25 megohm!!!  Anyway, put a nice Allen Bradley 1M 1% in there
and put in a regular two pin mic connector that was supposed to be
there. I also changed out the two .005's and the 300pf caps that
are hooked to the mic connector ( the 300 was hooked to pin 2 of
first audio)

On the air tests this morning got me an A+ for audio when using 
the 10DA but the D104 still has to have way too much audio gain
to 100% modulate and still sounds like crap.  This D104 is used 
daily with a Ranger and gets glowing reports so I know its good.

I have changed out the 12AX7, and the 6C4 in the audio, as well
as the 12AU7 ( the clipper circuit is bypassed)

So, I can't imagine why a D104 would not have enough drive for this 
rig, or WHY it sounds so darned bad.

any suggestions?

thanks in advance

Ronnie