Philips ECG40 dual transistor replacement

Hi,

most recently I stumbed across an article pulished by the German ELRAD electronics magazine in 1985. It describes the build of a 2 x 550W power amplifier, using Hitachi's 2SJ50 and 2SK135 latFETs.

As I still have plenty of these ancient power devices, I feel some itch to build this beast. Alas, the ECG40 dual transistor in the differential input stage is obsolete since a long time. Someone in GB offers them via eBay, but I don't trust this trade channel at all, at least not for obsolete semiconductors.

ECG40 has some sophisticated properties: Vceo = 100V, fT = 150 MHz, hfe > 400 being the most prominent ones.

Are there any equivalent or replacement parts available? I guess the replacement doesn't need such high Vceo, due to the cascode arrangement with two video transistors.

Another question: The author claims there aren't current balancing resistors necessary, due to the power devices' close tolerances. Is this claim trustworthy?

Still one more question: Note the swapped polarities between capacitors C5 vs. C6. What's the reason for this?

Best regards!
 

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I do not see rational reasons for using such a device: operating it at high Vce will gain a tiny amount of linearity due to the Early effect, but I don't think it's worth the trouble of going something that exotic.
Use a LED instead of the 22k resistor + a LM394, and you will get better performance.
Regarding the polarity of Ecaps, I see no rational reason either; there might be a small offset hidden somewhere, but even so, a few hundreds of mV of reverse bias is not going to upset a regular Al Ecap.
Lat Fets should not require balancing resistors, but they might need to be matched - let's wait for other members opinion about this -
 
The resistor is R11, and since the cascode transistors are HV, it poses no problem. The LM394 should simply replace the ECG40 (tie the emitters together). The LM394 is obsolete, but there are more modern, high performance super-pairs suitable