• 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.

6e5p WCF headphone amp with no cap!

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I was looking at the datasheet of that valve and the lifetime is stated 500 hours ?!?!?!
In that case, maybe the Pa (max) is optimistic. Just a thought.

Indeed. However can't comment on that as haven't used it yet.
Interesting to see that there is a close brother of this valve, the 6e6pe. Longer life one with similar characteristics. It's a bit price though, but may be worth looking at this one as well....
 
Another thing to remember is that if you are using cathode bias, grid current does not start when the input signal peak is equal to the bias voltage in magnitude.

This is because of the feedback from the cathode resistor. In simple terms, when the input voltage is 1.3V peak and the bias is 1.3V, you induce an additional voltage drop in the cathode resistor of (24mA/V*1.3V)*32) = 0.998V !

Of course this becomes a cat-chasing-its-tail situation since the increased voltage drop reduces the differential due to the input voltage.
 
This topology should do it with only one the lovely 6E5Ps at 100V/60mA. No caps and a low Zout with the help of a "garypimmish" battery-biased CCS(cascode is no problem). Will keep THD well below 0,1% too.
 

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NO, no gyrator at all this time this time. Look at the battery as a signal short. If you take the output from the midpoint, Zout gets higher, not lower. When taken directly from the source Zout will be just a few ohms. When taken from the midpoint you will get a useless ballpark Zout of 30-40ohm. So Antitriode is no option here.
 
Noooo, the second one is NO gyrator, the cap can be omitted;).

Question is wether the the battery would harm fidelity? No current through it so one could try Lithium cells. Thorsten L. used them in series with signal when adding grid bias. Think he bypassed with a small cap and a large resistor though.

Looking forward to your findings. Have never used and will never use headphones but I still find this subject amusing.
 
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