• 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.

6au6 line stage a bad idea?

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Ill be rebuilding my amplifier getting rid of all of my 12au7's and 12at7's. I have addressed my gain stages for my main 5 audio channels however my LFE channel still remains to be thought out/designed.

Since im using an silicon style amplifier for my LFE channel i do not need large amounts of gain but i do need a way to balance the magnitude of the channel with my others. Im considering a cathode follower arrangement but have not found many documented cases of using a pentode as an cathode follower. Is there a reason why its not frequently done?

I intend to tune my channels such that 100% at my source is just barely touching clipping on main channels, thus with a matched subwoofer preamp i would only need to adjust master volume on my sound card and not have to fiddle with sub volume level like i do now(nonlinear at the moment with current topology)

Expectations for the b+ is 450 not 500 volts, compensated by different anode resistor choice. This circuit was tested as a single channel and shown to be superior to previous solution:
http://ryujiwarui.com/upload/Pentode-Rev4B.png
 
Sorry for any confusion but I linked my complete circuit for high frequency channels only for background Information. I have not designed my subwoofer preamp circuit yet. My idea was that with identical tubes matching the channels would become easier.
 
As any CF has a gain just below 1, any CF will be a reasonable gain match to any other CF whatever valve is used.
I did not plan on using a cathode follower on my other channels, however i do still intend/need the preamp on my LFE channel.

Using the same grounded cathode topology and then attenuating it back down to line voltage is a poor choice, So a cathode follower in theory would accomplish my goals?

From a implentation point of view is it as simple as taking my 28~33k resistor in the anode of my other preamp design and bringing it down to after the cathode bias resistor, and changing the 1 meg to join in after the cathode bias resistor? or is that a poor way to design my cathode follower?

As such i would think any nonlinearities would match up with my other tubes, just need an log taper on the input to adjust the balance to where i want (the power amp will not have any kind of volume controls after the preamp)

i would have to also elevate my heaters about 100v to compensate
 
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