• 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.

Powering heaters on a pair of 27 tubes off 6.3V

I want to power up the heaters of a pair of 27 tubes off a 4A 6.3V CT winding. I'd like to keep this as simple as possible using AC heaters, and am leaning towards series connecting them, with a dropping resistor between them and grounding the CT. Ballpark value on the dropping resistor would be nice to verify what I am thinking I will need.

Other ideas are welcome, especially anyone with experience working with 27 tubes. I'm planning to use them as driver tubes for a SE amp using 47 output tubes. I also have some 56 tubes if 27's don't stand a chance of being able to drive a 47. TIA
 
Heater is listed as 2.5V @ 1.75A, and two in series would be 5.0V @ 1.75A.
From a 6.3V winding, the series resistor would be (6.3 - 5.0) / 1.75 = 0.743 ohms @ >2.3W.
A couple of 1.5 ohm 5W resistors in parallel should work ok.

You could use an adjustable 1 ohm resistor to account for AC line and transformer variations.
Some power resistors are made with a movable wiper lug/clamp for adjustment.
If you have a good junk box, there might be one in there.
 
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Oh yeah, they're a very old type of part. Sort of a linear rheostat, but easier to manufacture.
They just start with a standard resistor body, mask off a rectangular area when enamel coating them
to expose the winding, and then you add the sliding clamp lug. Here's an old ad.
 

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