• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

01A question

5R1 Mills added to the Coleman reg, it drops exactly 1V, and gives 200mA at 3.4V. C3 is a Musicap, hopefully the leads are not too long, but the 26 is exactly the same.
I changed the Teflons on the gyrator to 0.1uF Audyn True Copper Max caps, but haven't cut the leads at the moment. Will that cause problems?
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And I bought a couple of tiny cheap 1A ammeters which I would like to wire in the filament feed, powered from the raw DC for the regs. Would they be likely to cause problems? The sense resistor is 0.05R the unit consumes about 4mA. They would be visible through the gap around the valve bases.
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The Mills looks good!

The cap is huge! I would prefer to compare the sound to a smaller physical size. It looks a bit close to the HT, and this might be a risk for pickup. Is it quiet?

Ammeters in the filament circuit are a potential pickup risk (both conducted and radiated), I would not do this. The filament voltage can be checked a few times in the first few hours of runtime, but you should find that after this it will be very stable.
 
Wiring finished now (hopefully!), and questions about powering up the HT. In the gyrator, do I start with the pot (P1) wound down anticlockwise? And what resistance can I use as a dummy anode? Va/Ia=Ra? 116/0.003=39k ohms? Or have I got muddled?
I plan to start with the type 26 PSU, just removing the dropper resistor, and see what that gives me.
20170327_120829_zpslefkb01b.jpg
 
Anything above 10K will do the job, the more the less current through the output FETs which could be handy if there is any issue.
As you say, safer with VARIAC and slowly bring HT up. Then you can increase P1 to make sure it sets the voltage you need. If the output voltage is close to HT despite the change in P1, it's a sign of failure of the top MOSFET likely. However, this is unlikely to happen unless you have a short, etc.
Just do some wiring double checks before firing it up.
 
After a bit of a struggle, I found that 37k (27+10) worked to give me 115V and 3mA at the anode, that's with 204V in. Any lower value either gave me too much current (4mA @27k) or simply wouldn't get the voltage high enough. Will the voltage and current hold up with the actual valve in circuit though?
For the HT supply in the 26 PSU, at the moment I have simply removed the 2k7 resistor from the feed, with no other changes so far.
And the raw DC for the Coleman is 22V, so I added a 27R 20W in line to give me 16.5V, which is about what the 26 has.
My head hurts now, so I may leave it alone until tomorrow. :h_ache:
 
Well, using the Chinese sig gen I got this! Bloody hell!
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So I dragged out the old valve sig gen and got this. 1kHz.
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20kHz.
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But why is one inverting? Maybe I pressed a button on the scope; I'll have to check that out. The response is 6db down at 120kHz, and just starts to droop at 17kHz, but that's hard to see. And 6dB down at about 8Hz. So not too bad, and I will have to play some music through it next.
This is what it looks like now.
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I checked my scope, and I had pressed the "invert channel 1" button at some point. So the output is inverted, as normal. Phew! Overlaying the input and output traces, the roll-off doesn't really start until 20kHz, and is tiny even then. I still have to finish making the bronze mesh screen clips, and cutting the Sorbothane sheet for the valve dampers, and then I can try it.
 
It works, but it's incredibly microphonic. And there is some hum, so a bit more work needed. I took off one of the screening cages, but that didn't help, and I have another pair of valves so I will give them a go. And maybe the internal signal wiring will need screening. But the 26 had none of these problems, so I am a little puzzled. But it looks nice so maybe I'll just look at it. :D
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.