Why sk170 and sj74 are so special?

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The one and only
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1) They are very quiet. You can use them for the mc input on a phono stage

2) They have high transconductance at normal bias currents (like 10 mA)

3) With an Idss around the 10 mA zone, they conveniently self-bias

4) The N and P types are good complements in symmetric circuits

5) For such a little part, they do a good job into lower impedances with
low distortion - (witness the Beast with a Thousand JFETs)

6) Toshiba's quality consistency is second to none
 
Thanks for the answer! I suspected low noise couldn't be the full picture as I've seen them being used in buffers like your B1 where noise shouldn't be of a primary concern.

ad 2) high transconductance means we can achieve high gains with smaller collector resistors, right? But let's say I get 2SK2145 that is easily available from mouser at around 0.6eur a pop as compared to 5eur / piece for an lsk389. I can build a stage with an active load that will surpass any gain figures of a sk170 stage and still pay fraction of the price for the parts. There surely must be a tradeoff, but I'm not seeing one at the moment (I am quite a newbie - bare with me)

ad 3) by "conveniently self-bias" you mean we can use a convenient emitter resistor values? And by convenient I assume lower than in case of devices with lower Idss so we get lower noise from the resistor?

ad 4-6) good points, I didn't think about those.

Just to be clear - I'm not trying to question a choice of the jfet here, but merely understand the reasoning behind choosing this device in spite of limited availability. I started digging in this topic because I want to build a discrete opamp based on the opamp article from passLabs as well as Boberly article presenting EB-604 preamp. They both present circuits where mentioned transistors are used without really justifying why so there's where my question is coming from :)
 
> solutions with 2SK2145BL

2SK2145 BL is essentially 2x 2SK209BL in one package, but with both Sources on a common pin.
Apart from using them in diff pair, you can use the D-S reversibility and wire them as a follower, as in the "B1".
But they are not guaranteed to be matched in any way (Idss or else).
And the heats dissipation is limited.
The 300mW maximum rating from the datasheet assumes you have generous board area, and is absolute maximum.
In practice, for good reliability, you should not really go beyond 100mW per SOT23 package.
Unless of course you glue on additional heatsink directly on the package itself.


Done that all years ago,
Patrick
 
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What dissipation do you design for ?

For BL grade at say 8mA Idss and +/-15V, total dissipation is 240mA.
Typical Rthja for SOT23 is ~300K/W, meaning a junctional temperature rise of 72°C above ambient.
The absolute maximum I would dare to use any silicon based active device at.


Patrick

They are run very low about 2 ma 15 volts so not much dissipation.
 
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IMO so-so at best. The beta parameters are quite different which is all that matters.
Bob Cordell's upgraded Hafler, which he presented two Burning Amps ago, gets around this by using different amounts of degeneration for N and P. Picture below.

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