• 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.

Oscillation in tube amps

So what are you meaning by accepting the performance of the fix??

An example would be lowering (or raising on the low end) the frequency of the dominant pole, thus reducing the amount of feedback at frequency extremes. That reduces the effectiveness of the feedback, increasing high or low frequency distortion, and perhaps changing the distortion profile for the worse. The result just might not be as “good” as you initially expected.
 
Yes I agree @ Wb. I'm not suspecting cap issues all are major brand from digikey. I have had a little bit of a breakthrough last night was able to knock down the hum quite a bit with some wiring experimenting. So this design is using some individual boards from one of the members and it has separate front end/driver boards with each having gnd connections. The only time I get the hum is when I connect a stereo cable to input. The design utilizes a commom PS and common star gnd. When both channels are connected it defines a loop from drawing out the schematic. My next test will to be reconfigure gnd wiring to have only 1 wire going back to the star. Anyway I'll keep posted. This is a good learning experience and I will draw it all out. Be a good example for some of the newbies I'm sure.
 
Hello,

I've builted the Elektor Claus Byrith 4-30 (EL34 PP) amplifier and Im facing a wired oscilation, also with the NFB circuit disconnected.

(all the tests and scope pics: NFB off)

The problem start to appears with low output power level, 2w i.e.

1739414601661.jpeg

The frequency of the blob is 63khz.


If I remove the power tubes there is no oscillation in the other stages (pre and LTP phase inverter) both ok:
1739414778684.jpeg


Some pictures of the circuit, i've already tried to change the ground layout and bring the decoupling caps closer to the ef86 and 12ax7.

1739415245858.jpeg

1739415259019.jpeg

1739415269693.jpeg

1739414916018.png

One funny thing that I noticed is: If I touch the grid pin of one EL34 with the multimer probe the oscillation disapears (low output levels).
 
Check the bias resistor 390K and the grid stopper 2.2K. Also the screen resistors 1K . There are might be bad resistors or bad solder joints. You can use a wood stick to knock on the components to find out if there is any bad solder joints.
 
It's hard to see how the 1k screen stoppers are wired. The EL34 anode wire also seems to pass close to a PI stage wire and bias wiring. The squegger style oscillation could also be due to capacitance coupling from an EL34 anode wire to preceding stage high-impedance wiring - keep those anode wires as far apart from other wiring as practical - or move other wiring further away, or on the other side of ground wiring.

Unrelated to that, it looks like your main 0V wire from power supply zone doesn't go directly to the 10R cathodes TP0, which is the high current audio signal loop.
 
Not sure how to check that, in works fine in triode mode. In UL I kan hear the tubes vibrate and transformer "scream" , can see the oscillation in the oscilloscope, cannot recall exact frequency but the whole ting protest in UL mode, but are OK in triode
 
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