• 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.

6AS7 OTL headphone amplifier

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I would build the circuit with two transistor current sources, instead of the classic LED+ transistor, these have a higher AC impedance. Secondly, i'd refrain from using pots as resistors to set the current. Use a fixed resistor with a pot in parallel. In that way, if the contact of the pot goes bad, the circuit keeps operating.

Secondly your IRF840 could do with a NPN transistor that prevents overcurrent, the circuit as shown will blow up if you overload it, I have good experience using TO247 IGBT's as linear pass elements, their Safe operating area is such that they will survive even the worst overloads if you take some precautions. These include a resistor in series with the emitter, which turns on a NPN transistor (General purpose BC547 will do) if there is a short down the line. Adding some resistance in the order of 10-22 ohms in series with the collector also helps to limit the peak current before the transistor can discharge the gate capacitance.

Led biasing has one nasty disadvantage, the steep slope of the Led means that there is no "Automatic" compensation for the ageing of the tube. Normally the Ri and anode resistance/cathode feedback keep the tube operating pretty consistently over its lifetime. You could add some resistance in series with the Led. Also don't forget to bypass them, 10-47uF will do.
 
Yes, those where some of the things i noticed about the schematic.

IRF840 based power supplies work good, but are prone to failure if the mosfet needs to do a lot of current into a low R load (Like charging a capacitor) Most Mosfets/IGBT's cannot charge a large value capacitor because this would exceed their safe operating area. However if you build the circuit with a NPN current limiter (Essentialy making a N-Fet /NPN current source) this becomes less of an issue. However most mosfets/IGBT's will still exceed their SOA at startup.

I built a high stability 250V 150mA supply using a LTP transistor to control an IGBT . It works quite well and survives a dead short with a screwdriver. If you add three parts to your power supply, and perhaps change to a beefy IGBT my guess is that yours will aswell. Then you can add an electrolytic on the output.
 
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Have I to change something to use 5687 instead 6922?

I have 7N7 to use in place of 6922, have I to change something?
 

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You can check the datasheet for the 6SN7 for reccomended anode grid leak and cathode resistances. @ 150V B+ The anode will then hopefully bias up at +80V with respect to ground. Then you can choose whether to have the tube directly coupled to the 6080 or to include a RC bias circuit.

Edit i just checked for you, 2K2 cathode resistor, 100K anode resistor, 100K grid leak (Or the direct coupled pot like you show in your drawing. Gain will be about 24-28. You can and should bypass the cathode resistor
 
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I think I will make with resistors and I will measure the real consumption of anode & cathode resistor and after I will implement the anode CCS & the LED for the cathode.

Only to be sure, it's ok the attached schematic to use 7N7 as driver?
 

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That should work, note the 6080 grid wont consume a lot of current a few uA at most. However you could add a 1K resistor in series with

Its best to have a regulated power supply for measuring and evaluating these circuits, I have a 0-300V 0-100mA lab power supply for just this purpose. These are expensive if you need to buy a used unit, i was lucky enough to get two for €100 each.

Note that valve curves are curves that are the average of 10's of tubes.
 
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