Ceriatone DZ30 (Matchless HC30 clone) Crackle

[psychic fuzz]

I know literally nothing about matchless Amps. Still learning. Do you suggest I change that value?

NO!

I wont! Lol

[Roe]

Another quick update. I played the amp for about an hour. When I went to take the chassis out 2 hours later I noticed the transformers were still warm to touch. Not hot definitely warm. Is that normal?

Yes, as Roe notes.
Dense, heavy things like transformers have a big thermal "capacitance", so they both warm up and cool down slowly. It's the exact analog of an R-C filter. The "R" is the thermal resistance of the heat getting out to the air, and the weight/mass is the capacitance. A transformer as big as both your fists clumped together may have a thermal time constant of one to two hours easily. Five time constants is generally taken as the time for an RC to settle, so a 1 hour time constant trannie can easily take five hours to not be noticeably warm.

with the 50R cathode resistor there is about 200ma current draw at idle, which adds to the heat

[psychic fuzz]

Any ideas what would cause crackle when removing guitar cable?

[psychic fuzz]

Another quick update. I played the amp for about an hour. When I went to take the chassis out 2 hours later I noticed the transformers were still warm to touch. Not hot definitely warm. Is that normal?

Yes, as Roe notes.
Dense, heavy things like transformers have a big thermal "capacitance", so they both warm up and cool down slowly. It's the exact analog of an R-C filter. The "R" is the thermal resistance of the heat getting out to the air, and the weight/mass is the capacitance. A transformer as big as both your fists clumped together may have a thermal time constant of one to two hours easily. Five time constants is generally taken as the time for an RC to settle, so a 1 hour time constant trannie can easily take five hours to not be noticeably warm.

with the 50R cathode resistor there is about 200ma current draw at idle, which adds to the heat

Cool yeah I've never really thought about transformer heat until I went to grab it. Interesting and thanks for the insight. Just checking!

[Roe]

Any ideas what would cause crackle when removing guitar cable?

the jack. this is kinda common, even with cliff uk jacks. try to clean the jack (female) plugg and see if it is working properly

[R.G.]

with the 50R cathode resistor there is about 200ma current draw at idle, which adds to the heat

I agree that any more internal current draw at all will add to the internal heat generated.

I was on a more general point - transformers take a noticeably long time to cool down, sometimes surprisingly so. So yes, any more internal heating will make cool down even longer.