No, the power resistor would only be there, if necessary, to drop some of the volts from the 12V reservoir capacitor so that the 7812 runs a bit cooler. With a good design the 7812 will always output a stabilized 12V. The 7812 is designed to produce a stabilized 12V output, but only when its input voltage is in the range, 15V to 30V.You mean If I don't put a power resistor the readings would be false? What resistance and power should I put? Thanks
The dissipation in the 7812 is, (input voltage - output voltage) multiplied by the current that the 7812 is supplying. For example if the input voltage was 18V and the 7812 was passing 0.9A , the 7812 would be dissipating, (18V-12V) * 0.9A = 6.6W (to dissipate this power the 7812 would need to be mounted on a heatsink or it would just reduce its output current to a low value and as a result the output voltage would collapse to a low voltage).
In practical terms, the maximum current that a 7812 can supply is around 1 Amp but this varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1805459.pdf?_ga=1.4172984.942089101.1451155200
One of the problems is that we do not know what current your 7812 is supplying.
If you could connect 12V to your amplifier and measure the current consumed that would help.
spec
PS: I forgot to mention that in theory, to protect the regulator chips, you should connect three 1N400x (where x is any number between 1 and 7) diodes as follows:
(1) Cathode (+) to 7812 input and anode to 7812 output.
(2) Cathode (+) to 7809 input and anode to 7809 output.
(3) Anode to 7909 input and cathode (+) to 7909 output.
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