Fluorescent lamp choke - use in tube amp?

[NickC]

I been playing with this for a while back like 2 years ago.
From what i gather they are around 3 H - 4H with wire rating up to 200ma. Just take the watt ratin and divide by the voltage should get the wire size. Pls derate this figure. Also because they are used on AC 240v. They need to be largely gapped to handle the large ac. Therefore they even can be used as choke input. IN normall usage as pi filters. They work rather fine. However just to let you know most mass producelamp chokes are fine from recycle steel. Here they recycle the steel from cutting transformer iron and recycle for use in lamp chokes. So don;t run it to hard, even it is made for 240volts it might actully saturate the core if run to much into this. This voltage level is not that high for filter pi style but when run as a input choke it can be problem


Hope this helps

[Giaime]

Originally posted by NickC
I been playing with this for a while back like 2 years ago.
From what i gather they are around 3 H - 4H with wire rating up to 200ma. Just take the watt ratin and divide by the voltage should get the wire size. Pls derate this figure. Also because they are used on AC 240v. They need to be largely gapped to handle the large ac. Therefore they even can be used as choke input. IN normall usage as pi filters. They work rather fine. However just to let you know most mass producelamp chokes are fine from recycle steel. Here they recycle the steel from cutting transformer iron and recycle for use in lamp chokes. So don;t run it to hard, even it is made for 240volts it might actully saturate the core if run to much into this. This voltage level is not that high for filter pi style but when run as a input choke it can be problem


Hope this helps

Thank you!!!

So if I use it in a pi filter, to drive the screens of a couple of EL84 and some 12AX7 it will be fine? Max draw will be 25/30mA...

[Tom Bavis]

I tried one (24W/120V ballast) as an AC dropping element in a SE 6AQ5 stereo amp. Dropped WAY too much voltage at 250 mA - went back to 60 Ohm resistor. But it would work ahead of a full-wave bridge or doubler in a preamp power supply, keeping rectifier hash out of the transformer and AC line, and improving power factor.