Hello from Bedfordshire, England

[tonecat]

Hello to everyone on diyAudio

I've been surfing the forums for a few days now and there seems to be lots of interesting projects and discussions going on here!

Just to introduce myself - I've been in the electronics hobby for some 30 years, building all sorts of gizmos. I am mainly self-taught but somehow drifted into Computing as a career.

On the audio side, I have build several loudspeaker systems - my first original design was a double-chamber reflex using kevlar drivers. My favourites are transmission lines (built from Hi Fi World plans a few years ago) with Audax aerogel drive units. My latest project was a folded exponential horn for FE207's. I had some fun designing and building these, but my wife says they are too big for our small living room

I have a few amplifiers - my first tube design was ECC83/ SE EL34 with all DIY transformers and choke. I was so impressed with the results that I built a couple more: a poor man's interpretation of the Audio Note M7Tube preamp and a low power headphone/speaker amp using ECC83/ PSE 12BH7 (which you can see on the 'Headwize' site).

I have applied a few mods to my Marantz CD52MkII CD player - I beefed up the supply smoothing/decoupling on the audio side and put sockets in place of the filter op-amps so I can try different chips in these positions - I am using the OPA2604 at present (not entirely satisfied yet though). I also added a Kwok Clock 7. So far, so good.

I don't have any particular allegiences regarding Tube, Bipolar or MOSFET but I do admire functional simplicity.

I've been reading good things about MOSFETS (although I have not used them much) and I have some J49/K135 in the junk box so I'm going to experiment with them. Hot favourite plan at the moment is to use a double emitter follower similar to Hiraga's design, driving a MOSFET output stage biased for Class A operation. I'll post an update when I've made some physical progress on this!

[planet10]

Welcome.

Sounds like you'll fit right in...

Seems many of us have had a sideline in computing... after many years of that i've managed to make it a sideline.

dave

[dhaen]

Welcome from another "Bedfordian" - seems like this is hot audio-shire country
I'm in "sunny" Leighton Buzzard.

[tonecat]

Well, that shows how small a place the world is.

I live in Leighton Buzzard too (not so sunny today though).

Thanks also to Dave for the welcome.

Tony.
(Tony and TonyF were already taken )

[Cal Weldon]

Welcome Tony. Do you have pictures of some of your projects you could post? We love to look at others' stuff.

Cal

[tonecat]

Hello Cal,

Here are a few pictures......

This was my first valve amplifier and still my favourite for use with loudspeakers. It works really well with my aerogel transmission lines (see subsequent post for picture) and I often swap out my Sugden A21a in favour of this one.

[tonecat]

My current listening set-up comprises a slightly-modded CD52MkII and Sugden A21a with the transmission lines.
These were built from plans in Hi-Fi World Magazine (one of the KLS... series but I can't remember which!).

[tonecat]

The cabinet which has an internal 'S' shape is lightly stuffed with sheep's wool as can be seen in this rear shot of the line...

[tonecat]

My headphone amp using parallel single-ended 12BH7A will also drive sensitive speakers at a comfortable listening level (well, for me anyway...)..

I've got more stuff, but no more pix at the moment!

Regards,
Tony.

[planet10]

What iron on those 2 amps?

dave