• 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.

TV Damper Diodes

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
DAMPERS.

Hi,

This should enlighten you:

From the Svetalna website:

Damper diodes were designed to clip the negative "ringing" pulse appearing across a TV set's horizontal deflection coil during the retrace interval. Dampers must be able to handle relatively high peak currents and high reverse voltages without arc-over. Since the cathode of such tubes is usually floating above ground and sees very high-voltage peaks, running the damper on the same filament supply as the rest of the tubes in a TV set requires that the damper have its heater very well-insulated from the cathode.

In case you want to read to entire document:

6D22S

Hope it helps,;)
 
Ex-Moderator
Joined 2003
Health and efficiency

They're known in the UK as efficiency diodes because they greatly increase the efficiency of a TV line scan circuit during flyback compared to the older method that used a resistor to damp the oscillation. They are rugged and cheap, so they make good rectifiers, but they usually have top cap anodes (to withstand the 2kV needed for TV flyback), so they should be treated with a healthy respect.
 
Re: Health and inefficiency

EC8010 said:
They're known in the UK as efficiency diodes because they greatly increase the efficiency of a TV line scan circuit during flyback compared to the older method that used a resistor to damp the oscillation. They are rugged and cheap, so they make good rectifiers, but they usually have top cap anodes (to withstand the 2kV needed for TV flyback), so they should be treated with a healthy respect.

The top caps are the cathodes in my experience ;)

Cheers,
 
Ex-Moderator
Joined 2004
To resurrect this hoary old thread, I just wanted to ask if anyone is aware of any sonic disadvantages of dampers, with respect to directly heated types like the 5U4? My personal feeling is that nothing sounds better than dampers but I don't have any first-hand experience of filamentary rectifiers.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.